Future Says Run
by Emerald-Latias
Summary: Still suffering the effects of a sorceress's cruelty from long ago, humanity has learned to adapt to this altered reality where loved ones' lives can be irrevocably shattered without warning. Rinoa Heartilly thought she'd been more than acquainted with the unfairness of this life, but little did she know it was only the beginning. AU for the Where I Belong Inspired Challenge.
1. Prologue – Once Upon a Time

**Future Says Run**

**Summary – **Still suffering the effects of a sorceress's cruelty from long ago, humanity has learned to adapt to this altered reality where loved ones' lives can be irrevocably shattered without warning. Rinoa Heartilly thought she'd been more than acquainted with the unfairness of this life, but little did she know it was only the beginning. AU for the Where I Belong Inspired Challenge.

**Author's Notes – **The long and short of it is that I've returned to the AU world (though not back in the classroom) for the Where I Belong Inspired, henceforth known as _WiBi,_ Challenge – an offshoot of the WIB challenge that goes on 'til the end of November for longer works. I warn you in advance that this is probably a little more straightforward of a story to help make sure I don't spend the rest of October/November just planning notes obsessively (because doing that for one fic is bad enough) – I kinda want a fighting chance at making the deadline.

Lastly, this fic is dedicated to _ninjafallow/RootOfAllEvil_ – if it weren't for our tangent-happy conversations, I would have never gotten the idea for this in the first place.

Also, zombies.

Onwards!

-—-

_Prologue – Once Upon a Time_

Once upon a time, there was a sorceress who sought to rule the world.

To achieve her goal, she convinced the people of the land to help her out by placing a curse on the loved ones of strong capable adults, promising to lift the curse of unknown horrors if they swore undying allegiance to her and her cause. Helpless to stop her power play, many did just that, helping her ravage the towns and villages until they were firmly under her possession.

Soon before long, her colonies of the faithful grew in large numbers and she had become within reach of absolute control.

But then the dam finally broke. The last straw was had. Whispers grew into screams. "_So how come we've never seen the effects of this so-called curse?"_ they cried. Revolution was in the air and her subjects mutinied and the numbers quickly overwhelmed her. They say that the only sound that was heard during this coup was the overflow of the raging river. Pockets full of stones, she sank down to her watery grave, heart impaled with a bewitched blade.

With the witch overthrown, the people rejoiced, the rebuilding of structures began and the world started to heal.

But little did they know that the injuries caused by the sorceress ran much deeper than the edifices left in ruin and families torn apart in war. It was not a flesh wound they were recovering from — it was merciless killing strike, piercing the heart of the populace in kind and letting it hemorrhage.

One by one, the town's young adults started to turn violent and lose all rational thought with no apparent cause, wandering the streets to satiate basic physiological needs and hungers with no reservation or sense of propriety. Those kept restrained by sympathetic and hapless family members, friends or lovers were not spared from the same fate as those who found themselves with a bullet lodged between the eyes. The mind degeneration always worsened to the point of permanent confusion and imagined pain (leading to the infected's false belief that consuming the unaffected's brain matter helped) and all traces of what made the person themselves were wiped from existence – the body became nothing more than a decorative husk, fabricating the illusion of hope.

And that illusion continued when the children born post-sorceress appeared to be unaffected by this curse, only to have it come crashing down when this new generation neared adulthood and a new wave of zombie-ism broke out once more, leaving a new cycle of mourning and loss all over again and the realization that the once-questioned effects were all-too real and all-too permanent.

The sorceress's conservative tactics had been her undoing in life but made for an indelible mark on the world in death — couples stopped having children altogether in droves while others who had often carried the sad gleam in their eyes, knowing that their precious children would have to be buried far sooner than nature intended, denied the chance at the full life they deserved.

While you might think this was some kind of allegory to teach children and even adults about the consequences of making rash and poorly-thought out decisions, I can tell you that it's the furthest thing from the truth. The truth is that this is reality for the people of this world, a 'fable' presented to children at a very young age, only to be revealed as a factual account of the past once they hit their teenage years.

Yeah, it sounds kind of cruel when you consider they're only told a few years before hitting that aforementioned important and life-altering — or rather life-mutilating — milestone but, things have come a long way since then. Being born wasn't a death sentence anymore (well, at 18, I mean - nobody's immortal here) – scientists found a way to drastically reduce the chances of becoming a zombie by administering a vaccine to kids fresh out of their diapers.

The only problem was that there was a part of the magical element of the curse that made it impossible to make the vaccine 100% effective so kids were told about another not-so fantastical place alongside that fable – the Well-Being Center. Basically, they were told that their older brothers, sisters, cousins or friends went there because they were really sick with 'transition fever' and didn't always come home or at least come home the same.

I always imagined that they capped that sugar-coated explanation with a life-lesson about the importance of appreciating the time you had with your older friends or family members and some arts and crafts time to make some sick people some construction paper get-well cards. I imagined this because I never attended one of these things firsthand - my dad never handed in the permission slip to allow me to be in the room when they had a social worker do a presentation for this in my second grade class. Not like it really mattered since I was the only child of only children.

But…if I wanted to be honest with myself, it probably mattered far more than I cared to admit.

After all, right now I'm currently lying in a Well-Being Center bed, waiting for my morning breakfast to come and I wasn't even sick or recovering from transition fever.

In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm coming up on 3 years' worth of mornings just like these here.


	2. Chapter I – A Splash of Colour

**Author's Notes – **Hope you didn't mind the short prologue. Just kinda wanted to establish some main bits of the world here before getting the ball rolling which…I am doing now. Enjoy!

-—-

_Chapter I – A Splash of Colour_

I was still waiting for my tray of breakfast when I spotted a familiar face in the midst of the ever-changing cast of characters in the 4-person room where I'd been calling home for quite some time now.

"Hey Rin." he called to me after he'd finished setting everything up for a new patient; she was resting in the bed diagonally across from mine right by the door.

"Hey yourself, Zell." I replied in kind. "Still living the dream?"

The blond snorted at our little inside joke. "If by living the dream you meant 'narrowly dodging a fist to the face,' then yeah, I am definitely living the dream."

As usual, I smirked a little. Zell and I went way back to kindergarten, back to when we didn't know any better and we still hadn't parted ways yet when I'd gone to a different high school. For as long as I've known him, his eyes were always glued to horror movies whenever I came over for the odd playdate since my parents lived near his at the time. Back then, he could never figure out why people were so dismayed at his unabashed love of zombie movies or why they turned away or even scolded him outright, though never elaborating on _why_ they were doing said scolding, whenever he talked about zombie apocalypse scenarios. Once we were schooled about the reality of things however, the light bulb suddenly turned on and his mouth finally closed on the subject. Martial arts had quickly become his new thing after that but I still bugged him about the whole zombies thing on occasion - needless to say, I especially felt the need to keep the tradition alive ever since he'd landed a job here.

"Geez Zell, what did you do this time?" I ribbed. He just shrugged.

"Just told some guy he couldn't just hop onto the ambulance with his sister because it was already full with the day's pick-ups and it'd make him a liability. Guess he didn't like that answer too much."

This made me grimace a little. "Can't really blame him though. It's kind of scary to have someone transition and get carted off right in front of your eyes."

Zell groaned. "Shit. I forgot you did that when Selph turned while you were at her house."

"It's ok Zell, really." I told him. "You're just doing your job. But for the record, I threatened to scratch the driver, not punch him, before he gave in and let me hop in the van."

"Gee, sounds like you and this guy are a match made in heaven. Maybe I should dodge a few more fists to get him your number."

I narrowed my eyes and swatted him playfully. "Ha. Ha. Very funny Zell. Don't you, like, have a real job to do or something? I don't think cupid's given up his day job just yet."

"Tch. Fine. I'll go. I can tell when I'm not wanted." he replied in mock-hurt. "FYI – I heard that today's breakfast is cream of mush. Just thought you should know so you can, y'know, mentally prepare your stomach for that."

"FYI - it's only 'cream of mush' when you let the cereal get super soggy." I said with a bit of a chuckle, wrinkling my nose as he left the room with a bit of a wave and a grin.

When he completely left the room, the space reverted back to its usual drabness again. White walls, white tiles, white divider curtains, white bedspreads and white gowns…the only contrast I ever saw was the mops of dark, limp tresses on top of the transitioners' heads…which were also usually white as sheets. So yeah, there usually wasn't much in the way of colour around this place – which is why I could always spot Zell from a mile, or rather several feet, away in this place. I was thankful that he didn't get the memo that you have to have dark hair and eyes to be employed at the Well-Being Center — a conspiracy I've yet to debunk — it made it easier to wander over to where he was for our usual bantering sessions.

Letting a sigh escape, I sat up straight on my bed and let my eyes drift towards the new patient Zell had just brought in now. There was still some colour in her face but I could tell she was clearly out of it on some kind of heavy-duty pain meds by the way her eyes were kind of glazed over and fixating on a patch of the also-white ceiling. I bit back another grimace. Even after taking up a space in this very bed for many years and seeing many people come and go, whether they left this room without a scratch on them or in a body bag, it just never got any easier to see people in pain. And just by looking at her, I knew this girl was going to be in for a rough time here already.

In my heart, I just hoped that Zell wasn't referring to this girl when he was talking about a brother who wasn't allowed in the ambulance with his sister, but…my brain knew better than to dare hope for that. As long as I've seen him working here as the Center's paramedic, or 'human taxi' as he put it, last year, though he had awesome bedside manner with the patients in his care, Zell…wasn't exactly one to pull any punches when it came to talking about the crappy things that have happened to him en route to the Center. While said crappy things didn't really faze him, he had this unfortunate habit of making offhand comments within earshot of the people involved. I have no idea why he hadn't been reprimanded for that yet but…that was besides the point. …Which was that I hoped that her brother had a way to visit her sometime soon.

But just as the thought entered my mind, it had quickly left just as fast as another person entered the room. It wasn't Zell coming back to pick up something he'd forgotten or to tell me some kind of smart-aleck comment he'd thought of as he was walking down the hallway, but another man altogether, looking rather lost until he'd spotted the pain meds girl. Without a doubt in my mind, I knew this to be the girl's brother Zell had talked about, but…something just wasn't registering right in my head.

First off, it wasn't visiting hours – he was about 2 hours too early for that, especially since they hadn't really done the standard first day assessment to see where this girl was at transition and health-wise. Secondly, he was wearing the standard white Center gown with what looked to be blue plaid pyjama pants and yet…he had chestnut-brown hair, which was odd since all transitioners' hair and eyes were always, always magically turned dark brown to even inky-black whenever the fever took hold. Though I could only see his profile on the left side, I'd be willing to bet gils to Gysahl Greens that his right wrist didn't have the special tattoo that you get when you've cleared transition fever. And even if he had…well, that would have made even less sense. This place wasn't a substitute for a hospital - the Well-Being Center specialized in treating transition fever only.

In any case, if it weren't for how ill his sister looked, I would have come up to him and asked what his deal was but I just didn't have it in me to heckle him right now. Just as well, he chose that very moment to close the curtains around him and the breakfast cart lady decided to stop by to give us our breakfast trays right then as well, starting with yours truly since the other two other beds' occupants were still sound asleep, snoring up a storm.

After I was given a foil-topped and straw-poked container of orange juice along with a breakfast consisting of a small bowl of cereal and some apple sauce – sans any_ cream of mush_ — I mentally decided right then and there that I'd find out more about this guy when the time was right.

My curiosity was piqued far too much for my own liking from that tiny little glimpse of him — the parallels to my own life were just too uncanny.


	3. Chapter II –World's Weirdest Sales Pitch

**Author's Notes – **Long story short, it's been a crazy two weeks and I haven't had much time to write. I'm gonna try my darnest not to keep this bad updating track record (read: HA).

-—-

_Chapter II –_ _The World's Weirdest Sales Pitch_

It wasn't long after the breakfast cart lady had finished up with the other two sleeping beauties when Mr. Plaid PJs was asked to leave for his own room so the doctors here could do preliminary tests on the girl. In a rather monotone voice, I could hear him ask if she knew when they'd be done around only to be met with a shrug and told to come back in the afternoon, suggesting that he use the time to take a tour of the grounds. After that, he finally turned around and left without so much as another word; his annoyance on the other hand, spoke volumes within the loud clunk of his footsteps.

If I was looking for a chance to talk to him, now was probably as good a time as ever. And so after leaving my juice container half-drained, applesauce completely eaten and my cereal barely touched (Zell would have a field day with more cream of mush comments if he ever saw it), I got up from my bed and left the room altogether, hoping to catch up with that brown-haired stranger.

Luckily for me, he wasn't too hard to find. Unfortunately, he was also not hard to find because I ran head-first right into him when I darted to the left.

"Sorry about that!" I apologized. "Didn't mean to run into you."

"That's kind of obvious." he pointed out in a bored tone as he massaged the area I'd come into contact a little. "…It's not like anyone does that on purpose."

"…Ah, right." I nervously giggled as I'd made eye contact for the first time with him, my vocab suddenly deciding to take a nosedive. Definitely not a transitioner, I'd thought to myself as I attempted to salvage my ability to sound remotely human; his striking blue eyes told me that much. "Anyway, my name's Rinoa."

Crickets. I swore I heard crickets just then. I'm almost positive that the Center had suddenly acquired a pest problem…right here…right now.

And before my brain could inform me that this would not help the sudden invisible cricket infestation, I extended my hand for him to shake. "Nice to meet you…"

He gave me a slight look instead, one that suggested he was looking at an alien trying to probe him or possibly looking to pilfer a stash of Elixirs, leaving my hand hanging. "…Squall."

…Oh right, he probably thinks I'm sick. Not sick in the head, I mean, just…sick-sick. Actually, scratch that. He probably does think I'm sick in the head – everyone and their mother knew transition fever wasn't contagious. The fact that my hair wasn't brushed, I was wearing my ratty grey 'Talk to the Paw' cartoon Moomba shirt and threadbare yellow pyjamas probably didn't help matters any either. Either way, his crossed arms and stiff posture told me that he wanted me to go away, but Rinoa Christine Heartilly doesn't give up that easily, darn it.

"Hi Squall." I parroted, dropping my extended arm to my side to brush off some invisible dust off my pyjama pants. "Seeing as you've been shooed away from my room until further notice, I can show you around the floor to kill time if you want."

His left brow quirked upward. "…So you were eavesdropping."

"Well, it's kind of hard not to." I frankly told him, figuring that owning up to it was better than acting like someone who got caught with their proverbial hand in the cookie jar. "It's not a big room and the other two girls were asleep so they didn't have any company - obviously that conversation was the only source of noise."

A contemplative look suddenly fell on his face for a split second before a skeptical expression soon replaced it.

"I'll be fine on my own." he told me, punctuating the sentence with an after-thought of a 'thanks.'

When my stranger walked around me and started heading further down the right end of the corridor, as this was the first room past the nurses' station and there were five other rooms past mine, I couldn't help but notice the strip of skin not covered by the gown he was wearing. This was getting even weirder.

"I take it you're at least 21?" I asked. Surprisingly, he stopped and turned around to face me again.

"…What gave you that impression?" he countered slightly defensively, oddly much in a way an older woman would be in response to someone guessing her age and getting it on the money or older. Ignoring his apparent hang-up, I raised my hand to trace an arcing motion with my index finger, also stealing a moment to confirm that his all-important wrist was bare.

"Your back. I just noticed your upper back tattoos and seeing as you legally can't get them until 21 in Deling and pretty much any Galbadian city, I kinda put two and two together."

"Maybe I am. What's it to you?" he brusquely replied. I put my hands up, hoping he'd see the invisible white flag I was waving here.

"Just curious is all." I explained. "Most people who come through here are pimply teenagers who look-slash-probably-feel like death and don't need to shave daily. I don't see too many people with visible tattoos or that don't have that bad dye job look transitioners are plagued with either. And yes, I noticed that you don't have the post-transition tattoo on your wrist so yeah, I'm taking the leap of faith in assuming that you haven't transitioned either."

Squall's expression turned pensive. "…Is that why you followed me - to indulge your curiosity because I'm some kind of anomaly?" he asked, his tone having softened a great deal but managing to still exude seriousness.

"Yes…and no." I told him, a slight grimace burgeoning on my face. "I didn't see your back in the room so I didn't know how old you could have been then but…I did notice your brown hair and was pretty sure that both your wrists were bare. I was kind of curious since I've never seen anyone who wasn't actually sick come through these doors as a Well-Being Center patient. But for the record, you're not an anomaly. Not by a longshot. Most people don't transition straight at 18. In fact, I'd probably say a good chunk of people I've seen come through this floor are in their early twenties."

"Good…to know."

The slight discomfited undertones in his words and focus on the anomaly part of what I'd said, completely ignoring the fact that I did flat-out admit I was curious about him, made a light bulb go off in my head. Assuming what I'd said didn't just make him wonder how I could have backed up what I'd said about averages when the turnaround for transition was typically two weeks on the dot, I had a pretty good idea of why he was acting all defensive.

"…Are you in the same situation?"

"Me?" Naturally, he caught me off guard before I could even ask anything.

"Yes."

"What makes you think that?" I said, making it my turn to go on the defensive.

"The fact I caught your attention for whatever reason in the first place." he explained. "You wouldn't have noticed what I looked like if you '_looked-slash-felt-like_' death."

It took an effort the size of the Galbadia plains not to snort at him. If nothing else, it was nice to know there were people who looked as physically striking as he did without an equally-disarming ego to boot were indeed out there.

"Maybe I am." I coyly answered, slowly taking a couple of leisurely steps forward with my hands behind my back. "Depends how old you are though."

To my surprise, he walked alongside with me. "…24."

Ok, so maybe I was still a little off the mark. I'd been half-expecting him to be either barely 21 or barely _not_ 21. Either way, I _definitely_ wasn't expecting him to be a fair bit older than me, being the resident old lady of this floor and all. But taking in consideration the Zell abuse that nearly happened, it kinda makes sense to have him be really on edge if his little sister transitioned before he did.

"You make it sound like your age's a bad thing." I told him, a slight chuckle escaping my throat, trying to keep things light. A derisive snort was my reward.

"…The nurses at the hospital made it seem that way."

"That's weird. I've never seen the doctors around here act like that."

"No, at a _hospital_. I was told to drive my sister here after they assessed her at the ER. Didn't know such a place existed before."

"Oh weird. They didn't teach you about this place in school?"

"…Not that I remember."

As more lightbulbs turned on, I stopped walking altogether before we rounded the bend. He stopped too. "You don't know much about transitioning at all, do you?"

When I was met with pure silence, it was all the confirmation I needed to prove my suspicions…and to prove he was most definitely just like me, in the same situation to a T. I felt sad for him.

"I'll take that as a no. Ok." Taking a deep breath, I readied myself to throw the world's weirdest sales pitch. "So I know this situation is probably weird and scary enough to begin with and me being a nosy weirdo is probably not helping things either. But…if there's one thing I know from being in your situation when I was 19, it's that the monsters in your head can do more damage than knowing the truth could ever do. If you want me to, I can tell you pretty much everything you want to know about transitioning even if I haven't gone through it myself."

I was met with another patch of silence, those steely-blue eyes of his looking like they were analyzing every minute change of expression on my face. I didn't realize it was possible to be burning up and frozen on the spot simultaneously until now. Worse yet, it was for reasons I couldn't understand either. The worst case scenario is that he'd say no and leave me to explore the second floor all by himself, staying as clueless as a baby Chocobo. I mean, it's not like I was trying to ask him out and had my heart on the line here. Why was I so nervous over a complete stranger? He wouldn't have been the first one who had no idea what went on around here – they all learned the ins-and-outs of this process as they racked up days in here. Far from it.

"Fine."

I blinked. "Fine? Fine as in, you want me to tell you about transitioning?"

He nodded. "On one condition."

"Sure."

"You stop bothering me after this and you tell me how old you are now."

I raised a brow for more reasons than one. "…That's two conditions, Squall. Pick one."

"You know what I meant."

"Pick one."

He groaned. "…I'd pick for you to never bother me again, but I have a feeling you'd ignore that promise anyway so tell me your age."

This caused me to inwardly smirk. For a virtual stranger, he was a really good judge of character …and a real masochist. At this point, I have no idea why he was sticking around – even I knew I was being annoying right now.

"Alright. I just turned 22 a few days ago. And… before you ask or just wonder, I've been here for 3 years because of a mix-up. That's how I know what I know. Anyway, I can either tell you what you need to know in the activity room at the end of this right hall before the bend or we can just walk around the second floor while I talk since it's pretty much a square circuit."

"…Might as well walk."

"Ok then. Just follow me."

And he did just that.

After we rounded the bend where there were no longer patient rooms, just storage closets on the left wall and doors to the individual shower/bath rooms on the inner wall on the right, I showed him the other side of this floor where the privileged stayed in private and semi-private rooms in the inner side and the windows facing the outside on the other. Then I fit in an explanation about how transitioning starts with an acute fever and temporary darkening of the hair and irises that lasted two weeks and could happen any time after 18, making a point to reaffirm that if it happened to you earlier or later wasn't really a sign of anything bad or off. I pointed out the double doors in the corners of this south end we were currently walking around that led to the east and west wings – doors that were for personnel only, likely used for lab results and staff lounge areas and lockers since I knew any surgeries were done on the 3rd floor.

Before leaving the south end, I purposely turned towards the last right hand window and placed my forearms against the ledge to place my chin on, eyeing the dreary rainy landscape in front of me as a momentary reprieve before I had to tell him about the ugly part. When I saw his figure out of the corner of my left eye, my eyes tore away from the cracked, rained-upon asphalt of the drop off area and parking lot down below. I took a single breath and turned my head toward him.

"If you transition, you have about a 40% chance of walking out here without a scratch." I began. He quietly nodded and I continued. "Other than that…you can also walk out of here with a side effect but the quality of life is still there. I've seen people lose one of their senses and come out of here either deaf, blind, unable to taste and smell anything or completely numb to hot, cold and general pain. One of my friends here who transitioned about 2 years ago ended up sterile so there's that too – well, he could have just not known before but…I didn't really want to press the subject."

"…What are the chances of those afflictions happening?"

"…Um, not really sure since I'm just going by observation. It's hard to tell when some people are more vocal or calm about what's happened to them but…there's one last thing I should probably tell you."

"…I'm assuming it has to do with zombification?"

"…Yeah." My voice felt strained all of a sudden, my body drained too, but I somehow worked past it to continue. "It initially presents the same way as the cases of people getting a minor episode of amnesia after transition so…because of a few lawsuits, they're not allowed to legally euthanize people who've turned into zombies until they can confirm that they have red irises which is pretty much the telltale sign. …So, since they literally can't jump the gun, when people get to the last days of transition, they're literally tethered to the bed as a precaution for others' safety."

"…What happens after someone is proven to be a zombie?"

In spite of myself, I sighed. "A lot of times, people will wake up and see that there's an empty bed where the person used to be. And if the confirmation happens in the day, they sedate them and take them somewhere else strapped to a stretcher. There haven't been too many times where it's really deviated from those two scenarios but the ones that do tend to stick in your head for a long time."

When my explanation didn't elicit some kind of question or even any kind of response from him as he opted to look outside the window himself, a welcome wave of relief crashed against me. Then again, with all this information I just dumped over his head, he probably didn't have much room in his brain to care about anything other than the situation with his sister. I couldn't blame him for that because I felt the same way when I'd come here. Only I didn't have the luxury of finding anything out from the permanently super-busy nurses – I hadn't been lying when I said I only knew what I knew because of spending 3 years in this place.

…_3 years in this place. _

I've been questioning whether or not I had made the right decision all those years ago more and more often as the days have gone by. Today was the first day in a long time where I couldn't honestly say I regretted being here but as I noticed Squall walking back to the north end of the floor without so much as a word, the doubts started creeping in again in an instant.

I bowed my head and sighed.

I knew my life wouldn't truly begin until I went through transition – nobody's really did – but I wish I had some better alternatives until then. Clinging onto the company of a complete stranger was a new low and part of me wanted to cry despite the good I'd done today by informing Squall about what his sister was up against. God, I hope he has better options than I do when his sister's transition is done.

I'll even make it my personal mission to drive him away from here if he thinks he'd be better off sticking around the Well-Being Center after her ordeal's over.


	4. Chapter III – Love Letters and Bedside

_Chapter III – Love Letters and Bedside Observations_

After walking back to my room alone, I plunked myself down in by bed like a sack of bricks. I felt utterly exhausted. Enough so that I'd almost contemplated ignoring the wad of what had to be paper lightly pressing into my back in favour of indulging in a quick morning nap to pretend like I was sleeping beauty number 4 in Room 1R. Sadly, as far as bedtime stories went, I was more like the princess from the princess and the pea so that idea quickly went to hell. Not because it would be impossible to sleep on a mattress with a paper 'pea' digging into my back, but rather because there was simply a paper pea in the first place – that was to say, if I were a cat, curiosity would have killed me a long time ago.

Yep. I clearly needed a pick-me-up nap. But instead of doing the sensible thing, I plucked that wad of paper behind my back and smoothed it out to read over.

_As you can see, I was totally right about the cream of mush call here. I think you owe me an apology for doubting my mad deduction skillz. _

_Also, FYI - in case if you were trying to do my matchmaking legwork for me, that grouchy-looking dude you were showing around slash awkwardly flirting with was not the dude I was talking about. Fists of RAGE (and yes, that needed all caps) was easily over 6 feet tall and uber-tan. Might want to let this guy down easy in case you don't want to pass up the chance of finding your 'soulmate.'_

_-Zell _

_P.S – Sister RAGE is in 3R…just so you know. Might want to pop in over there occasionally to try and catch a certain someone. ;)_

I audibly groaned. I should have known better than to expect anything other than a typical Zell letter, where the said auteur had a penchant for penning things in a way that never failed to lovingly annoy me, but maybe I secretly wanted a Zell-penned distraction deep down inside.

Tossing the scrap of inked paper aside and mentally snorting at the idea of that, my eyes focused across the room towards the curtained-off bed belonging to Squall's sick sister. Instead of giving into my tiredness and doing the reasonable thing by taking that much-needed nap (yet again), my thoughts drifted towards my guarded stranger. I wondered how he was coping with being tossed into a situation with so many unknowns – maybe even more so than I'd had three years ago when the patchwork quilt I'd made from the odds and ends of second-hand information I had had unravelled completely. Ok, maybe I shouldn't have been trying to compare situations when I barely knew anything about him and couldn't say for sure whether or not I was comparing apples to apples but…it wasn't often when I was handed a mystery to pique my curiosity in the face of the typical, the routine and the order I saw every damn day.

What I hadn't told Squall when we were walking around the floor was that after witnessing so much repetition and so many patterns over the years, I could pretty much predict what was going to be the end result of people's transitions with about 90% accuracy if I happened to be around them a fair bit of the time – obviously that meant it was limited to my ever-changing cast of roomies. Either way, it was something I don't think the doctors and nurses could have ever picked up on since they were always scattered around all the corners of the floor during every 10-hour shift they had. Not to mention, the patterns didn't really follow natural cause-and-effect so it was easy to dismiss the things I noticed as pure coincidence.

Like, I tended to noticed that those who lost their hearing in the end would often speak more softly as their transition went on. It'd make infinitely more sense if they all started talking louder to compensate for the eventual hearing loss, with sprinklings of 'WHAT?' and 'WHAT DID YOU SAY?' for good measure, but no. Those people tended to be the ones who'd end up sterile. I'm not even kidding about that. It's why I've tried to keep that particular expression out of my vocabulary and made an effort to pay attention to anyone who was talking to me as best I could, even as much as I wanted to tune Zell out completely sometimes. Needless to say, there were plenty of days where I wished that this horrible curse didn't share my odd sense of humour.

The worst punchline of all was that even though I had a pretty good track record of predicting outcomes, the ones that always kept me from being completely on the ball and not falling off of it 10% of time was the best and worst outcomes possible – those who came out of this completely intact and those who had to be euthanized because of the sudden loss of their humanity seemed to remain truly random and pattern-less. But even now, I wasn't sure if I wanted to ever be right about those two outcomes. No matter how many times I've seen the latter outcome happen to friends and strangers alike, it just never seemed to get any easier.

It definitely wasn't even easy keeping my polarized prediction from someone so lost already. The only bright spot with this burden I was currently carrying was that the subtle signs usually didn't present themselves until towards the end of transition and it wouldn't be the first time that someone's looked so sick at first and turned out ok or that, well…I've been antsy and prematurely jumped the gun in my predictions.

I quietly sighed slash inwardly groaned. Rinoa, you're right – you most definitely _are_ jumping the gun about Squall's sister, so stop making doomsday predictions for for her when she couldn't possibly be more than a day or two into her transition.

Rubbing my eyes, I decided to take that nap I'd been putting off for the past two minutes. Leaning forward to pull back the covers, I cocooned myself into them the moment I was on my side again and closed my eyes. And then I opened them again not even a minute later, realizing how impossible this would be with the sun already peeking through the open windows even though it was my back facing the said windows and not my face. Sleeping beauty, I definitely was not.

And so I just lied there, opting to rest my eyes and zone out without any intention of achieving anything more. Of course, with so much running around my head, my various thoughts demanded to be expanded on. And indulge them, I did. But I deliberately chose to focus on something neutral instead of sad, not wanting to crank the metaphorical vice my heart was trapped in any further, so I ended up settling on the tattoos I'd seen on Squall's back as my target.

He had two pieces in total, all of them squarely on the center of his back between his shoulder blades. The higher piece was a side profile of a sitting lion who had its head tilted downward as if it was observing something. It was no bigger than the palm of my hand and only consisted of some simple and clean black lines with minimal artifice or flash. The varied thickness of the lines suggested that it wasn't just some linework left undone either, but rather the intended finished product. I was pretty much confident of my conclusion seeing as the lion looked like it was the older of the two pieces by simple comparison and wasn't large enough to require multiple sittings to hypothetically finish colouring the insides – this was especially plain to see considering the other tattoo was also all done in black ink but looked a little more vibrant.

…And that second tattoo definitely provided me with something to chew on.

It was nothing lewd, weird or what-the-eff-worthy like Cactuars dancing with Ethernet cables or full-blown tentacle porn-y stuff, sadly neither of those things were pure figments of my imagination – I have blurry cell phone photos posted on a social site way from back when to prove their existence, but it was just something…abstract. Not in an artsy kind of way, but like it was clearly referencing something that only Squall had to have been privy to. I mean, there really wouldn't be any other reason to have a tattoo consisting of three rows of six numbers in a simple font, which I thought looked like a bold version of Courier New, deliberately crowded together without space now was there?

Ugh, I wish my old cell phone I brought with me hadn't broken – right now, all I wanted to do was figure out what the sets of numbers stood for but I couldn't remember the order whatsoever other than the fact two rows had an 8 in the same spot and the row without a lined-up 8 started with a 0 and so did the row above it.

Wow…and I thought just following Squall earlier was a new low. I half-contemplated maniacally laughing out loud right now for no apparent reason as I reopened my eyes just to make sure it would be next to impossible to top myself in pathetic-ness ever again but I decided against it, figuring it wouldn't exactly be considerate to wake up Sleeping Beauties No. 1, 2 and 3…and Zell who was with another paramedic bringing another sleepy patient in out of the corner of my eye?

I bolted upright and I swear I'd forgotten how to breathe for a moment or two.

Sleeping Beauties 1 and 2 were still there, I could even hear them snoring, but that would mean…

Zell opened the curtains to the first bed by the door and confirmed my worst fear. My stomach plummeted.

…_Squall's sister wasn't there anymore. _And they always, always, _always _kept you in the same bed from the start of transition to the very end, even for the initial evaluations.

Suddenly, my own loneliness meant nothing anymore. All my frustrations over enigmas I wanted to solve shelved indefinitely.

None of this made sense for God sakes – she hadn't been here for even a day! There has to be an explanation, some kind of misunderstanding…just something…

But as I saw Zell and his paramedic buddy carefully move the new girl into the bed from the stretcher with a couple of doctors filtering into the room behind them with studious but otherwise-blank and unfazed expressions all round, I knew better than to hope for the impossible.

There was only one reason why people were sent away like this and one reason only.

Now I could only hope that the doctors would let Squall down gently with this new information.

I snorted for real this time, not caring that Zell thought I was snorting at him and shooting me a weird look in kind.

I knew the best case scenario would be that they'd drug him up nice and good after telling him the news – nobody ever had time for niceties in this place.


	5. Chapter IV – Second Name Second Thoughts

_Chapter IV – Second Name, Second Thoughts_

"Geez, Rin. I didn't think that letter would press this many buttons. Can't remember the last time you dragged me by the wrist in a huff like that…ow. Mind clipping your nails and giving me some, I don't know, _advance notice_ before you try dragging me to the activities room and/or attempting to pull my arm out of the socket next time?"

When I let go of his wrist, I tossed him a look, a decidedly unimpressed one with some eye-rolling action when my glare merely deflected off of him.

Fate might have granted me the opportunity to catch Zell's attention once more because of that letter, but apparently it had also decided on keeping Zell in mock-Rinoa-mode all day. Needless to say, I wasn't looking for a laugh anymore.

"No, it's not about the ridiculous letter that I immediately threw out." I told him, adding those last few words for good measure. "I wanted to ask if you knew anything about what happened to the girl you carted to my room earlier this morning."

Zell cocked an eyebrow. "C'mon Rin, how long have you been here?" he chided, "If she wasn't there and a new body's in her bed, you know what happened there."

"I know, I know. I just…thought you could confirm that's what happened since…well, none of this really makes sense. I mean, I don't think I've ever seen someone come and go in the _same _day."

"I didn't see it firsthand because I was out bringing this new girl here so someone else must have transferred her elsewhere. Sorry."

"It's ok."

A grimace tugged at the corner of Zell's lips. "That was the sister of that guy you were talking to, right?"

"Yeah. It was." I said with a sigh. "He didn't seem to know much about transitioning so I told him the basics about it. Sadly, the basics kinda included the part where I'd said it lasts two weeks, not two seconds."

"Hey now," he said, wrapping his arm around me, his frown magically disappearing on command, "as much as I was teasing you earlier, I know you were only trying to be a good Samaritan to our buddy Jim here. He's not going to take it personally. Hell, it could be possible that she might have been sick for awhile without knowing that she was transitioning if she was as clueless as he was."

It was now my turn for one of my own eyebrows to quirk upwards. "Thanks for telling me that but…Jim?" I repeated, "I don't know who told you that, but his name isn't Jim."

Zell chuckled as he let me go. "Sorry, my bad - forgot that you weren't there. When not-Jim was at the receptionist desk trying to admit himself here voluntarily for whatever reason, they couldn't pull up his medical records from the name he gave them so he tried using Jim Leonhart – or maybe it was Leonhard? I'm not quite sure because he was mumbling it under his breath. But anyway, guess he had a different legal first name for whatever reason sooo that's why I called him Jim…because I couldn't remember his other first name." He tentatively paused for a second. "…It wasn't Squid, now was it?"

In spite of everything going on, I just couldn't help but giggle at this. "No, but you're close. It's Squall."

"Oh. Yeah, that's definitely what it was." he confirmed. "Kinda weird that he'd go by Squall and not Jim though. I mean…what kind of name is _that?_"

"It's no worse than our names, Zell." I pointed out. "Anyway…do you think that they'll tell him about his sister?"

"Wow. You're worried that they won't tell him period?" he commented, "Man has this place turned you into a full blown Cyndi-Cynic. Of course they're going to tell him about Ellone – she was probably the reason why he admitted himself here in the first place. And even if they didn't, I practically have no doubt he's going to clue in at some point that his older sister's not around anymore and start asking the right questions."

I blinked hard, somehow getting the idea that moving my eyelids an extra time would help me hear things more clearly after the fact. "She's older than him?"

"Well, I'd guess so. I mean, I got a good look at her chart when I took her up and nearly did a double take when her date of birth read December 5th, _1983_. Transitioning at 29 has got to be a world record."

A moment of clarity, not to mention awe, hit me.

The first row of numbers from Squall's tattoo – 120583 — it was her birthday. So…if I followed that logic, the middle row with the before-last number of 8 – I assumed the last number would be either a 7 or 8, depending if his birthday was in January to early March or from later March to September – had to have been his own birthday. But, if that was the case, that last one couldn't have belonged to a mother or father…the last two digits made up a number way too close to 83, if I remembered properly.

But then I suddenly got a waving hand in front of my face. "Earth to space cadet…hello? You there?"

"Oh, yeah. I am." I said lamely after blinking – yes, I did _that_ again – like an idiot. Zell chuckled. "Sorry."

"No worries but…I kinda have to split and do the thing I'm paid for around here. You going to be ok?"

I whole-heartedly nodded. "Yeah, I'll be fine."

"Good. I'll see you sometime then. Keep out of trouble, you hear?"

I smiled. "Never."

"That's my Rin." Zell replied with a grin of his own.

As he left the deserted activities room a few seconds later, I took a long, hard moment to figure out what I was to do here. I wanted to believe that Zell was right when he'd said that Squall wouldn't take it personally that his sister didn't exactly follow the pattern I'd outlined for him earlier but…I couldn't exactly shake my doubts about that either. Part of me wanted to be an outlet for his pain and help him cope after unintentionally building his hopes up, even microscopically. It was irrational but, when I could count the times I've been able to do something good since I've been here on two fingers, I couldn't help but remember that old saying about how evil happens when the good men do nothing.

Ok, that still didn't justify anything and maybe I was still being irrational over a quasi-stranger I'd met less than an hour ago but…I'd made a promise to save one soul, _his_ soul, from the limbo I was currently suffering in, so I guess that meant helping him get over this too.

-—-

I waited until well after lunch before making my move. Using the time to properly wash my face, brush my teeth, comb my hair and change into something other than my ratty t-shirt and pyjama bottoms set – truthfully, I'd only changed out of the shirt and into a plain black tank top while keeping the yellow pyjama pants out of laziness — I'd somehow transformed myself into a semi-presentable member of society before I headed out of my room.

After walking past the nurses' station in the middle of the corridor, I momentarily stopped at the doorways of every room after to peek inside them. Common knowledge over the years told me he'd be in one of the rooms to the left of the nurses' station since they liked to segregate the sexes as best they could. Of course, that all depended on the gender ratio of those coming in but strangely enough, the concept of boys on the right side when you came from the elevators and girls on the left tended to hold true with the odd exception of the rooms nearest to the nurses' station.

Right now, I was walking by 4L without sign of Squall anywhere. It was a fact that worried me a bit because there were so many empty beds catching my eyes. Ok, so maybe that was just a sign that a lot of people finished their transitions at the same time and where either moved to another floor, discharged altogether or using the bathroom but…

_Pull it together, Rinoa. He's not you. Or…at least you can't confirm he's anything like you were._

Giving my head a good shake, I continued my game of hide and seek.

I approached 5L's door…nothing but a bunch of people half-heartedly picking at what had to be hour-old and thoroughly cooled-over lunches. 6L? A symphony of synchronized snoring.

…And precisely one sequestered squall in the far corner. With a capital S.

Swallowing my sudden onset of sprouting nerves, I slowly entered the room, hoping to get close enough while remaining undetected so I'd have no opportunity for my brain to scream for me to slink away and have no choice other than to commit to this.

What I didn't anticipate was him immediately making eye contact from across the room that I hadn't even taken more than a step and a half into. I froze and burned all over again, the contradictory feeling intensifying as he refused to look away and I continued to lock eyes with those icy blues staring back at me.

Had he been anticipating my arrival or was this just some kind of tactic to unnerve me enough so I'd leave?

"…So you know then."

Option A, it was. I took a few more tentative steps closer to him.

"Yeah…it's kind of hard not to when you share the same room." I lamely replied, stealing a moment to even my breathing again.

He said nothing in return, nothing to deter me from inching closer, surprising me completely. But he never let his gaze waver either, making it harder and harder to see that sight come closer into view. The tiny piece of taped gauze on the crook of his left elbow explained away some of his general reaction and yet I also knew that it couldn't serve as the scapegoat. Sedatives were there to ease away some of the anxiety, to dull emotion to an extent but never to completely erase. If he found me annoying before, it wasn't going to change the possibility that he'd find me annoying now.

I soon found myself sitting at the very edge of the foot of his bed, firmly planting my legs down to make sure I could sit half-off the bed without mishap. It was a vain attempt at looking like an equal and not some kind of overbearing mother hen. I knew it was all in vain because I was acutely aware that this particular psychological tactic didn't work for me; for some reason, my presence always screamed mother hen. Then again, it was probably because I had a natural tendency to want to help people and an even more forthcoming ability to rub people the wrong way whenever I tried.

…And yet, he still surveyed me without an ounce of malice present in his features. They really must have given him the good stuff.

Still, pushing those mental quips aside, I took a second to gather my thoughts, hoping I could think of something constructive to say to break this uncomfortable barrier between us that I couldn't seem to shake.

"…Did they take her away in front of you?"

I shook my head after he'd beat me to the punch, my head then becoming too heavy to bear the weight of keeping it upright. "No, I didn't. Only found out when they carted in someone new in her bed. Sorry."

"It's fine." he brushed off.

When I thought we were headed into an uncomfortable silence or I was headed for hearing a lifeless request to leave his bed and room, he surprised me.

"…So you have no actual proof that she's been euthanized."

My head snapped back up, my mouth going dry as I saw the deadpan expression on his face telling me the statement, which oddly wasn't posed like a question, was not said by someone barely clinging onto reality by a thread – then again, this could have been the work of someone with an impeccable poker face. If I hadn't gotten the overwhelming impression that he definitely wasn't the touchy-feely type, I would have given him a reassuring hug right now in either case.

"Squall…" I softly began, voice threatening to crack – I hated being _that_ person. I hated finding more reasons to hate this reality even more. "…I know it's hard to believe but, around here…the way things are done never change. You don't need to actually see them turn to know what happened. And honestly…I can tell you that it's better if you don't see the ones you love turn and get that confirmation. Trust me on that."

Finally, that awkward silence I'd anticipated finally dawned on us. He said nothing in return, and I was almost reduced to looking away again and aimlessly feeling the coarse, threadbare white linen adorning his bed with my fingertips just to distract myself from that fact until he'd finally tell me to go. But…I wasn't. I couldn't be. Not when the parallels were stacking up so high they risked toppling over us completely.

And so I did something ridiculous, crazy even.

…I elaborated on what I'd said.

"Actually… I lied."

This caught his attention immediately but it still took me a good moment to gain enough courage follow up on those three words and unbury this tortuous memory once and for all.

"Up until a couple of years ago, they had a completely different system for the rooms." I began to explain. "You were put in a room according to how far along you were thought to be so when it came time to come out of transition, they'd keep you in the individual rooms and lock you with non-perishable food trays and bottles of juice to last you the couple of days it'd take to come out of transition. The only time those people would see anyone in those rooms would be for the daily check-ups. Obviously the doctors doing that were always armed with the necessary sedatives ready to go just in case but…"

"…Something went wrong."

I sombrely nodded.

"…One day, someone who didn't understand how things worked opened one of the doors and thought it was ok because it happened to be unlocked in the first place. Little did she know, the friend she'd gone to visit because of a simple _'I'm sooooo bored'_ text sent to her had turned since sending it and almost killed her. …The only reason she hadn't succeeded was because the girl was able to smack her friend over the head with a nearby glass juice bottle, somehow knocking her unconscious for long enough so the doctors could come in and take over. Since then, they switched over to the current method so no one could accidentally get hurt ever again and paid off the stupid girl so she wouldn't ever tell reporters."

"Then why are you telling me?"

Upon hearing that, I wanted to either inwardly smile or shake my head – truthfully, it was probably the latter. Not that I wasn't expecting him to put two and two together, but I certainly wasn't anticipating that he'd fixate on the fact I'd told him at all rather than _why_ I was telling him. Then again, he _was_ sedated so maybe I was overestimating his current comprehension skills just a tiny bit.

"Well, unless if you're writing an expose or planning to sell me out so someone else could write one, I'm pretty sure telling you won't hurt." I answered in an attempt to humour him; somehow, the very action leaving me vaguely annoyed all of sudden. "But all that aside, the reason I'm telling you this is to show you that…"

I froze again, feeling suddenly unsure of the reasoning behind why I'd told him about Selphie, or rather I was suddenly unsure about how it was supposed to help him. Here I was, trying to end the silence and all I could come up with was a sob story, albeit a real one, just to show him it could always be worse? I knew better than anyone else that comparing someone's problems to the more dire ones of others did not work in making you feel better – it only made you feel like crap and a bit annoyed that you were oh-so-casually reminded that there were poor children in Centra who wouldn't even think twice about eating those 'gross peas' on your plate instead of balking at them like you were simply because they didn't get to eat every day.

"Squall…forget what I was saying." I told him. "Whether you saw her turn or not, it's still a painful ordeal to go through no matter what the circumstances were. I wish I could say it gets easier as you go on but it doesn't. You just make room for the pain and find ways to deal with it."

"Thank you. …For being honest," he told me, catching me off guard, "…but I know she's not dead."

…It was just one surprise after another with this boy, it seemed.

"Squall…"

"-Don't go there," he said flatly, stopping me dead in my tracks, "I'm not delusional. She was only sick for three days before I forced her to go to the ER. If you say that it always takes a full two weeks for a transition and people transitioning felt and looked like hell, then there's something very wrong about this scenario."

My mouth went dry again. I didn't know what to say to this. I couldn't know what to say.

Either I could believe him, or I could write him off as someone who possessed the dangerous combination of being incredibly grief-stricken and incredibly good at spinning tales.

"Tell me…" I found myself asking, bypassing the fact my brain was at a block and going with my gut, "-do you remember what they told you?"

"Nothing much." he tersely answered. "A doctor came into the room and asked if I was close to Ellone. When I said yes, they informed me that her situation was dire and there was nothing they could do."

I shook my head at this. "They asked if you were close? What the hell? You're her brother. Even if you two hated each other, it should be pretty obvious that you should know something's happened."

Surprisingly, he was the one shaking his head now. "We're not. Not by blood, anyway." he clarified. "But whatever, it's not relevant. …Was what I was told typical for this kind of situation?"

The answer here was that it wasn't. Not at all. Despite Zell accusing me of being a Cyndi-Cynic, my concern about Squall not being told anything really wasn't too unfounded a worry, especially considering it wasn't the norm for them to go out of their way to say anything unless _you _were the one prompting the conversation by asking _them_ if something happened to your family member, friend, lover, spouse or baby daddy/mama (yep, as taboo as it was, it still happened sometime, sadly enough). And even if the whole, _'pro-actively approaching him first'_ thing was taken out of the equation, it seemed kind of shifty that they'd phrased it the way they had considering I'd known plenty of bearers of bad news who'd just outright say that they'd turned into zombies, albeit in a still-tactful way despite pulling no punches – in fact, I'm pretty certain that it was drilled into their heads to answer anything you asked in that manner. Here…it seemed all so vague, almost like she was dying of a terminal disease in its latter stages instead of turning.

Still, regardless of the truth was, the question remained about what was the right thing to do here.

Should I let sleeping dogs lie or would it be better to keep hope alive? What if the doctor at the ER had goofed up because of her lack of tattoo and this was really a coincidence that she was dying from something else?

Weighing the pros and cons in my head, I decided that the best course of action would be the one I would have wanted for myself had our situations been reversed.

The answer came easily to me after deciding to go with that line of reasoning.

"No. Everything about this is off. Way off."


	6. Chapter V – Reap What You Sow

**Author's Notes –** Apologies in advance, I'm way too tired to read this over, will fix any errors tomorrow-ish.

-—-

_Chapter V – Reap What You Sow_

Naturally, it was only after the words left my mouth when I'd realized my error.

I'd given him a reason to stay when I wanted to make sure he'd have the courage to eventually leave this place.

Make no mistake about it, it _was_ the right thing to do, but what I realized was that it wasn't right thing _in the long-run_. That dawned on me as soon as he asked me to leave right after I'd confirmed that what he'd been told was in no shape or form the usual thing they said.

But no matter how many times I'd secretly wished he'd dismissed me before, I wasn't anywhere near as willing to go away anymore.

So while I immediately hopped off the bed, I did not comply by leaving the room altogether – I did just the opposite. I decided to forgo all the potential consequences and walked over to the other end of his bed instead, no longer worrying what he'd think about me – I knew it was better to be the mother hen he didn't appreciate pecking at him than the chicken who could only run the other way here.

"Oh _so_ now you tell me to go because you got the confirmation you wanted?" I tried to lightheartedly josh, trying not to let my annoyance show, "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were only using me for my intel."

"You were more than willing to talk my ear off about transitioning earlier." he dryly pointed out. "…How is this any different?"

"Because last time was to help you get an understanding of what goes on around here." I answered. "And right now, I'm worried you're going to use what I said as a reason to plan something reckless."

"…And whose fault is that for telling me that this situation is suspicious?" he argued. By now, it was clear to me that he was not lost in grief any more…well, assuming he'd ever truly believed that his sister was dead at any point. "If you didn't want me to act on what you said, then you shouldn't have said it."

Yes, because I wasn't aware of that before, Mr. Leonhart. Thanks for telling me that.

"Ok, maybe I shouldn't have for your own good, but I thought you'd appreciate honesty since I know I would have appreciated you being straight with me if our situations were reversed. Just, please, for Ifrit's sake, don't make me regret telling you that."

"…I fail to see why you should care about what I do…or whatever it is you think I'm going to do. You might know my name, but I'm just a stranger you targeted because I wasn't asleep or moaning and groaning like the undead."

"Well, I don't know. According to my paramedic friend, I apparently don't even know that much. How can I be sure that your real name isn't Jim and you're giving this weird name to…I don't know, keep me from asking the nurses about you?"

…_Smooth, Rinoa, smooth. _

Despite my supremely-dumb off-the-cuff remark, he didn't just boot me out of the room right then and there for being such a mega-dork. Instead, he just looked at me like I had an extra head sprouting out of my neck for a good hard second. I suspected that being sedated impaired his ability to do any booting or convey any strong emotion on his face.

"My name is not Jim, and I assure you that no nurse will ever refer to me as Jim either. It's just a stupid screw up with my identification cards…not that I have to explain myself to you."

"No, it's fine. I totally get that." I said, finding myself suddenly change my tune. "My birth certificate lists my name as Elizabeth Christine Caraway because that's what my father wanted it to be and my mom didn't want to fight him on that. It kind of sucks that the law only considers you a legal adult until after you transition. I would have changed it eons ago if I could."

Squall looked slightly confused, as if he was trying to process something difficult enough to making working out it in his head hard. The odd expression he wore looked unnatural enough on his features to gently remind me that he was still under the influence of drugs.

"…Where did you get Rinoa out of Elizabeth?"

Yeah, I had the sneaking suspicion that he wouldn't have said that out loud, or given this thought the time of day, had he been sound of mind.

"I'll tell you if you tell me about Jim." I bargained with a smirk, figuring I could get away with it (yes, I knew was a bad person). "Deal?"

"No."

"C'mon. It can't be that be that bad." I whined to no avail. He just wasn't budging on that – I guess the sedatives weren't as strong as I thought they were. "Ok, whatever. I'll tell you anyway because I'm super nice. My mom was never someone who dreamed when she was asleep. One day before she got married, she had a dream about having a daughter named Rinoa. She had the same dream the night before she went into labour but they'd already decorated my nursery with those decorative wooden letters that spelled out Elizabethand had other things with name already on it so it wasn't exactly an easy sell to change my name at the last minute. Eventually she told me about those dreams when I was little and it ended up being her nickname for me between the two of us."

I found myself rubbing the inside corners of my eyes as a precaution, hopefully one my friend wouldn't put too much stock into. When I felt that it was safe to move my fingers away from my face, I decided to get our exchange back on track.

"Ok…that whole name thing aside, you did have a valid point so I'm just going to be straightforward with you here and explain myself as best I can." I began, in a voice struggling to come out any louder than a whisper. "…I didn't approach you just because you weren't sick. It's because you reminded me of, well…me. There was no mix-up three years ago. I'd admitted myself here voluntarily because I was terribly worried about my friend Selphie and everything seemed so much scarier back then because I barely knew anything about transitioning. My father didn't want me coming here, but I stayed here despite his attempts to bring me back and basically ruined what little relationship we did have. And after I was nearly killed and she was euthanized…everything just fell apart and I have no way of being out on my own and supporting myself without transitioning. I know, I know, you probably didn't want my life story but it's the only way I can explain why I've been nosing in your business."

"…So you're worried I'm going to turn out like you even though you know nothing about me."

My throat burned at the reaffirmation of my sad, pathetic existence as I nodded to his non-question. The tables were turned in an instant, spinning quickly enough to cause some kind of musical chair-style whiplash. His words were like splinters I couldn't pull out.

"_Yeah…that's pretty much it._" I weakly agreed, my throat lighting itself on fire once more for good measure.

He hadn't told me to leave, but I ended up leaving in that instant of my own accord, head bowed, thoroughly embarrassed by my own actions, my tunnel vision. I'd given away my deepest secrets and fondest memories to a stranger who didn't deserve them, didn't need to feel burdened by the weight they'd possessed. And for what? To become a saviour for someone who could very well not need saving?

I fucked up.

That was fucked up.

I'm fucked up.

-—-

I didn't return to my room.

I went to the furthest accessible place away from it without leaving the building itself – the table far corner of the cafeteria on the main floor. It was a guaranteed safe spot where none of the busy nurses, doctors or the odd mobile 2nd floor patients would be likely to visit, namely everyone who could have possibly witnessed my oversharing episode with Squall.

So here I was, sitting in a cold hard plastic chair, learning forward with my forearms lying over one on top of each other on the long rectangular table. My chin rested on them with my nose less than an inch away from the wafting aroma of strong coffee emanating from the large caramel-coloured disposable cup; I was just waiting for it to cool down enough so I'd avoid burning my tongue on the first sip.

Of course, I knew this was likely to end up being a futile exercise since I was about as impatient as a chocobo who was promised Gysahl Greens but this time, I really wanted to try, needed to even. Then again, cups of coffee weren't anywhere near as judgemental as people were. They wouldn't care if you burned your tongue by taking things too quickly – they'd just sit there until you were ready to try again, patient and kind enough to overlook your character flaws.

…And, somehow I just managed to hit my newest low by making coffee-related conceits.

I really should have laughed maniacally for no reason earlier as insurance to prevent this sort of thing from happening. But no, I overestimated my ability to act and generally be sane. It's a good thing I can't buy lottery tickets in this place, that's for sure – I'm sure the astronomical odds would have just furthered some.

Pawing the full coffee cup closer to me, I brought it close enough for my hands to curl my fingers around the cup, warming them slightly as my mind raked me over the coals again. I sighed into the cup, hoping that it looked like I was just blowing into it instead to passers-by.

I honestly have no idea why it escalated so quickly in his room, why I was tripping up so many times with late-coming, after-the-fact realizations that the logic I was using was faulty at best. I've never, ever acted this way towards someone before, not even towards Selphie when I was pretty much scared out of my skin 24/7, or towards Zell when I watched him go through the same thing a year later. It was like I turned into some kind of obsessive non-girlfriend, or perhaps an over-zealous wannabe-guardian, whenever I was around him and I couldn't make sense of that.

I mean, I'd had boyfriends when my life wasn't officially considered on hold until further notice and I never acted that way towards them - I was comfortable in my own skin. I trusted that they were capable of keeping wandering eyes and hands in check and fully agreed with the concept of boyfriends' having female friends - I definitely wasn't clingy in the slightest.

Not that I was implying that Squall was or going to be my boyfriend but I just meant that…god. Brain, I hate you right now. I really do. Stop making leaps that aren't there.

Taking a break from mentally facepalming, I lifted the paper cup to my lips and proceeded to take a sip slash burn my tongue, which was the thing I wanted to avoid doing. Ow.

After setting the damn thing down as if it were plagued, slid it aside to make room for my head, forearms and elbows, I plopped my head down on my arms and resigned from all logical endeavors.

There really was no point in dissecting what caused this incident. It wouldn't change the fact that it still happened, that I still felt embarrassed and that it reaffirmed how alone I really was despite all my efforts to distract myself - with the books in the activity room, long walks around the floors to keep my muscles from atrophying and my weekly banter and note reading sessions with Zell…I guess it still wasn't enough to make me forget that I was imprisoned here by my own stubbornness and pride alone.

But in all honesty, it's gotten to the point where I've had enough games, had enough of wanting to help people who didn't want to hear a word of what I said – blowing it with Squall is just the icing on top of the cake. I'm ready to throw in the towel and swallow my damn pride by calling _that man _once and for all and admit to him that I was wrong, that staying here really did change nothing.

Yes, I would do that just as soon as I had the motivation to stop the pity party of one I was having and lift my damn head off the table.

…I was pretty sure that'd take a while.

But when the creak of a chair scrapping across the floor on the other side of the table startled me, the shrill noise was all the motivation I needed to move my head enough to stare at the offender.

And then I wanted more than to bury my head in my arms again. Instead, I settled for an exasperated sigh.

"…Please tell me you wandered down here by mistake."

When he shook his head, I reached for my coffee just to have it nearby again in case I needed to burn my tongue some more to distract myself from what was likely to be an awkward exchange at best.

"…Well, there's got to be an excuse why you'd go anywhere near the crazy girl who saddled you with her life story for no good reason." I insisted, praying that he'd actually talk instead of making _me_ guess why he was here - because if that was the case, I was ready to dump my scalding coffee on him to get him to leave me for good.

"I need your help."

"…I can't, Squall. She's…" _She's not dead, Rinoa, or at least not likely to be…yet._ _But still…_ "…if she's not dead and they took her for a reason, chances are that I won't be able to do anything to help you. I wish I could help get her back, but…the part of me who was an optimist died a long time ago. You're better off moving on as soon as you can instead of letting things become regrets and hang-ups. I'm sorry."

While Squall's expression remained largely neutral, I noticed that he was clenching his jaw, ever so subtly.

"…You would have lied upstairs if you actually believed that." he said rather pointedly. "But you didn't. You believed in the slim chance she was still alive by telling me something was off."

"…Ok, so maybe I'm a terrible pessimist."

"-No, you're a terrible liar." he interjected rather hotly. "…Listen, I came down here because you're my only option and I will not stop bothering you until you agree to help me. I don't care if you fail, I just want to be able to say I tried. And if you're worried I'll stick around after that, it won't be an issue. What I saw today was enough of a deterrent from that."

I didn't think it was possible but, I was pretty sure I wanted to hug and slap him at the same time. But instead, my eyes started to well up. Started to, but I didn't let it go any further than the corners of my eyes.

"Ok…" I mumbled, blinking extra hard to keep the saline at bay, noticing something else by sheer accident. "…I'll try but, we need to go upstairs right now."

"…Alright."

I grimaced when I got up myself. I'd gotten confirmation.

"No, it's not just because of your sister." I explained. "Your eyes…they're a dark cloudy grey now."


	7. Chapter VI - Inky Waters

_Chapter VI – Inky Waters_

Even after these years of watching people go through transition, friends and strangers alike, I couldn't honestly say that I'd ever seen the very beginning of the process – not even with Selphie.

While I'd been at her house on the day of her transition, I didn't notice her eyes and hair changing since we were having a girls' night in, which inevitably meant watching chick flicks on her big screen television in the dark. Selphie never did have a solid grasp on a little concept called 'moderation' so we'd also done the whole spa-type stuff with mani-pedis, facial masks and the whole robe-wearing, having towels in hair thing too. Of course, the combination of wet hair and said towels while being in the dark made both of us unaware that anything weird was going on. Well…until she decided to go to the bathroom after the movie was over to put the towel away in the hamper, that was. Needless to say, when her primary instinct was to hole herself up in the bathroom while mine was to stuff my face at the junk food buffet of chips, popcorn and candy Selph had laid out while she was absent – like I said, she _really_ didn't get the meaning of moderation…and apparently, neither did I – it kinda didn't allow for me to see the magic to work its…_well_, magic.

I know I shouldn't have been thinking this, being fully aware of what this process could do to peoples' lives and all but, quite honestly, it was fascinating to watch firsthand. When we were sitting at the cafeteria table, it had only taken one literal blink of an eye for his piercing blue eyes to go cloudy grey – it wasn't a subtle change either, despite his eyes being bluish-grey to begin because the new colour was so…_unnatural_. If I'd thought that his eyes looked equal parts of foreboding and enthralling before, they looked downright foreboding and mysterious now. I did wonder if that was the final result though, considering everyone's turned from somewhere between dark brown to black, usually depending on what the transitioner's original eye color had been. I mean, Zell's blue eyes were far brighter than Squall's and yet he went chocolate brown just like Selph - and hers were originally emerald-green.

But regardless if it was or wasn't, the most interesting thing was watching his hair darken in front of me. No word of a lie, it was like someone had suddenly dumped an invisible can of black ink over his hair. The moment his roots started to darken, it was only a mere matter of seconds before every inch of his chocolate-brown hair had all turned to an inky shade of black, the shade pretty much matching my own hair colour. Weirdly enough, it didn't look so horrible on him, in fact-

"…Stop staring at my hair." he groused.

"It's not my fault all the elevators are all on the 5th level." I lamely countered. "What else am I going to look at?"

"The display telling us where the elevator is, the elevator doors, the floor…the list of things that isn't my hair can go on and on."

Though he was trying to be deliberately abrasive to get me to stop staring at his hair, I could catch a hint of nerves in his tone.

And so I deliberately started a staring match with his pyjama pants. I was pretty sure I was winning.

"…You're not funny." Having declared myself the victor by default, I graciously re-established eye contact with their owner. He seemed to appreciate it - the slight grouchy look on his face told me that much. Obviously it would have been much grouchier otherwise.

"Sorry…" I found myself saying, "It's just that I've never seen it happen in front of my eyes. It's kinda hard to look away."

"…My hair's already darkened?" he asked confusedly – I nodded.

"…Yeah, it's the same shade as mine. You'll probably be able to see it in the elevator's really polished steel finish." I explained. "Just…let me know if you're feeling lightheaded, ok? That sometimes hits you just as fast."

Squall gave me a curt nod and then looked away to eye the overhead display rather intently. Returning to my earlier thoughts, if I hadn't seen what he'd looked like earlier, I would have thought that this was his natural colour since it suited him so well. Heck, he could have easily passed for a relative of mine from the Caraway side.

…That is, save for his now-darkened eyes, of course.

Grandpa and Grandma Caraway had the most piercing grey eyes I'd ever laid my eyes on. And from what I remembered Grandpa telling me, it was a long-standing trait passed down from generation to generation. Not surprisingly, I think the Caraway family tree full of people able to insta-guilt you and/or scare the living daylights out of you with a single grey-eyed glance had something to do with it - I honestly wouldn't have been surprised if my relatives had staring contests for dates or something.

So um, weird tangents aside, obviously I broke, no, shattered, the mould, completely – the only thing I got from my father was his jet-black hair. Sadly, it was only until I got to this place when I finally understood why so many people were so uneasy around me all of my life – the black hair, really dark eyes combo wasn't exactly a popular one.

Dragging myself back to reality, I noticed that the elevator was just about due to open at any moment now. Squall was so stock-still that I wanted to poke him in the ribs to make sure he hadn't petrified on me. But instead, I stole a moment to reread the numbers on his back to indulge my earlier curiosities.

Cool lion? Check.

120583? Check.

082388? Ah ha! So his birthday was in August and he was going to turn 25. Guess he's officially the old man on the floor now.

041269?

04/12/1969?

April 12th, 1969?

…Ok, I really needed to ask him about _that_ one – because it confirmed my thoughts about the number being too close to 83 (_but did that really matter if she was adopted?_) and since the coincidence was kind of eerie.

"Um…kinda-personal question." Seeing as the elevator opened at the same time, my question was ignored since Squall focused his energies on getting in it. I got in it too, but I opted to just go ahead and ask seeing as I'd sincerely doubt there would be any other time I'd be conveniently trapped with him alone. "…Whose birthday is April 12th?"

He looked at me as if I had two heads sprouting out of my shoulders. It precisely the reaction I was anticipating.

I pointed to my own back. "That number tattoo you have - I figured out that the first two were you and your sister's birthdays so I was curious about the last row of numbers."

He still looked at me like I was insane and/or sprouting heads in places they should not be. Alright then. Clearly, I have learned nothing from today's oversharing episode and so I decided to relegate myself to the opposing corner of the elevator for the 15 second trip up to the 2nd floor.

"…That one's not a birthday."

I blinked.

Naturally, the elevator doors just opened so he walked through them without elaborating. Drugs were truly the catalysts of weird.

"…Oh, ok." I found myself awkwardly mumbling. "I just thought it was kinda weird that the last line you had matched the birthday of someone I knew…well, I guess that the fact that it doesn't represent a birthday makes it all the more eerie of a coincidence."

"…I don't see what's so eerie about it. It's just a coincidence." he duly replied. "Seeking out patterns is typical human behaviour. Nothing special about that."

I would have rolled my eyes but the point was kinda moot considering I was pretty sure he didn't have eyes at the back of his head to appreciate the effort.

"Right. Well, I still think it's _weird_ that the last row would have worked out to April 12th, 1969 if it was a birthday because that was my mom's birthday –down to the year, even."

For the second time today, I crashed into his back. Only this time I didn't say sorry – I'd learned my lesson from the last time. And so, I just took a step back. "You ok?"

"I'm fine." he curtly brushed off. Strangely enough, he lingered there for a second. There clearly weren't any nurses at the station - which was sadly a common occurrence - so obviously, he wasn't trying to stop and find one. Working on a hunch, I waltzed around him before he had the chance to keep on walking.

"You don't sound really convincing there." I shot back. "Are you feeling lightheaded?"

When he shook his head, I was tempted to use that as my cue to continue the interrogation. Tempted but I didn't follow through with it. His eyes just…they looked unfocused enough that it was all the proof I pretty much needed.

"Just stay close to me." I told him, stepping to his left to be beside him within arm's reach. "I'll help you find a nurse to look at you, ok?"

"…I'm not an invalid."

"You're right, you're not." I humored. "But you'll still need some help in finding a nurse and it's not as straightforward a task as you might think. I'm pretty sure they like to use subterfuge to avoid being heckled by patients while they're on break."

"…That word doesn't mean what you think it means. You meant stealth."

I wanted to chuckle a little under my breath. "That's why it's not straightforward to find them. They're actually using tricks to avoid being spotted."

"I call bullshit on that."

Now I was really chuckling. "Ok, you win – I was pulling your leg. They don't actually know the meaning of the word 'break.' But in any case, it's still just a simple process of elimination — if you insist that you're not an invalid, we'll have to check the rooms one by one and hope we get lucky."

"_You'd better not be trying to get lucky under my watch, Rinoa."_

I spun around, confused and…to be honest, a little embarrassed. It was only then when I saw a head pop up from behind the waist-high counter sectioning off the nurses' station area - Nurse Bear's mop of chestnut-brown hair to be precise. I guess she must have been quietly crouched down to pick up something the whole time.

"Ah…no, Nurse Bear." I said rather shakily, also trying my hardest not to look at Squall, though I wasn't sure why – she was probably the least intimidating nurse on the floor. "I was just looking for a nurse to check him out…_I mean-_ check his condition, since…his hair and eyes just turned now…and stuff."

Shoot me. Shoot me now, please. Anyone.

Nurse Bear had an undeniable impish grin on her face as she walked around the counter and approached Squall – of course the said grin was directed at me before she fell back into professional caretaker mode at the drop of a hat when she directed her gaze at him.

"You're the boy who came with Ellone Loire, right? Not-Jim if memory serves."

Squall sombrely nodded.

"Thought so. Although…I probably shouldn't be calling you a boy at your age. You look like those days are long behind you." she said, talking to herself more than him as she reached for the tiny flashlight from her burgundy scrubs' pocket, proceeding to shine a light in his eyes. "…Hm, looks like a cloudy grey. I don't envy you, that's for sure. You're probably the first case of this in about 20-ish years."

Squall rubbed his eyes after the light was put away. "…Great. My day just gets better and better."

"Hey now, it could always be worse." Nurse Bear admonished.

"Pray tell, exactly _what_ is worse than having your sister pass away without getting to say anything and getting sick with some atypical offshoot of this fucking curse?" he snapped, "Because right now, the alternative is looking pretty damn good."

Even though I knew he was lying through his teeth, aware that he didn't believe that his sister was dead just yet and simultaneously amazed at this convincing performance despite the drug-addling, I couldn't help but grimace all the same - not only for the situation, but for Nurse Bear walking right into that too. It's a sad state of affairs when the right hand sometimes didn't know what the left had done. I legitimately wouldn't have doubted the possibility of her not knowing what had happened.

Not surprisingly, she matched my frown. But more surprisingly, she dared to reach out and place a hand on his shoulder, even dared to devote a long hard moment solely to lock eyes with his steely gaze too.

"…_Hearing something trying to pass itself off as the truth._" she solemnly muttered under her breath, her eyes flickering to me for a second as she lowered the arm. She then began speaking at a normal volume. "You'd best go back to your room soon Squall. If history holds up, it's going to be a difficult road ahead for you and you'll need all the strength you can get. Don't give up on me just yet, you hear?"

She looked at me again, practically looking through me even. "And I'm sure Rinoa can help you out if you need something when I'm not around. She knows better than anyone how the nurses around here ricochet around like pinballs in this place. Not that I'm condoning this 'getting lucky' business, mind you."

Squall shot me a skeptical-slash-bewildered look and I couldn't help but sheepishly grin at him and the situation.

"So no buying winning lottery tickets, Nurse Bear?" I joshed, attempting to diffuse things a little.

"Nope, not unless if you plan on cutting me in the deal somehow. I desperately need to take a vacation…or just to retire, period." she said in a rather matter-of-fact way before turning back to Squall once more. "I know, I know, you probably want to whack me with a tuna or something right now for going randomly off-topic. Let's go to your room and I'll give you a rundown of what to expect – no fishy business, I promise."

Squall looked at me once more. Clearly, his brain just processed the fact that he wasn't floundering in shallow waters anymore - this was the deep sea he'd been dropped head-first into.

Ok, so _maybe_ Nurse Bear wasn't the only one who enjoyed really bad puns…not that I'd ever tell a sole.

…Ugh, I cod-n't believe I just did that.


	8. Chapter VII – Where We Came From

_Chapter VII – Where We Came From_

Things only managed to get even exponentially weirder when Nurse Bear accompanied Squall to his room. Said nurse wouldn't seem to take 'no,' or even 'isn't this Squall's decision?' for that matter, for an answer. I walked into the room with them and when Squall went to sit on his bed, I was ushered to sit at the foot of it. If I hadn't known any better, I would have thought that Nurse Bear had somehow managed to confuse me for Squall's girlfriend, wife or an inoperable benign growth on his body but the problem was that I did know her. Even all-too well, maybe.

Allison Bear always worked the afternoon shifts, wore scrubs in various berry-inspired colours, often brought a container of leftover beef noodle casserole for her mid-shift break, and so on and so forth.

But most importantly, outside of maybe Zell, she was the one I talked to the most, even if it only usually consisted of 3-5 minutes of idle chit-chat during her weekday shifts. She'd often give me pep talks when my attempts at befriending a new patient or just trying to help them out often fell flat on my face because they weren't interested in anything I had to say.

In short, I owed her and Zell for keeping me relatively sane these past few years and that was why I had an idea of what she was trying to do here, vague comments about Ellone's situation or mock-warnings about not trying to get lucky under her watch aside.

She was trying to give me someone to take care of, a charge to be responsible for. Maybe even foster a friendship if Squall didn't cast me aside or hate my guts by the end of this.

Either way, I made sure I paid attention to what she had to say now.

"Not to frighten you Squall but, the kind of dark cloudy grey shade your eyes turned to is something of a rarity in this place, I'd say it happens to less than 1% of all the patients we see here. Even then, the case files we have on these kind of occurrences say that it's only happened to female patients so far. Not that I'm implying that you're secretly female or anything like that, but you're definitely one special snowflake."

Yep. Nurse Bear really had a way with words. Said way often resulted in either major eye rolling or a major case of the snickers. Oddly enough, Squall wasn't partaking in the former but the more I thought about it, the more I figured that he probably didn't give a damn about anything other than what this cloudiness meant.

"I'll be blunt with you here," she continued, "every person who had a case of Cloudy-Eye Transition had far more severe symptoms than those whose eyes had turned dark brown or darker. Unfortunately, there haven't been enough cases of CET to do proper studies on this phenomenon so I can't really explain to you why that is."

"…_How severe?_" Squall quietly asked her.

Not that I didn't feel like this earlier, but I now felt incredibly weird about sitting at the end of his bed and hearing all of this. It was one thing giving advice on how to deal with the norm around here – I was used to that, I knew what he could expect then and coach him through it but… this was the first I'd heard of this concept and it was kind of unsettling. Not that I could have considered Squall a friend yet in the wake of today's events but, I certainly didn't want him to go through an uncharted brand of hell that I couldn't even navigate myself with confidence after miserably failing at getting him through the kind I did know about.

"Well, typically the case files have indicated that while the length of the transition remained the same, those with CET were more prone to higher temperature spikes, sleeping very long hours and were often physically drained the point of being virtually bedridden for the whole duration of the transition. Normally, those symptoms would have been limited to that brief initial peak a couple days in with a typical transition - so basically, it's the difference between having a bug and getting a super-bug.

"The only thing is that you might have to be tethered a little earlier than usual as a precaution because it's harder to check for signs of a transition tapering off because that peak tends to hold until the very end – it's very much an abrupt start and end with CET. Depending on your sleep-wake cycles and if you can manage to keep food down, we might have to put you on an IV to get you the nutrients you need, but it's typically used as a last resort. Same with inserting catheters and all that fun stuff. In any case, it's a good thing you're not on the scrawny side right now because it's not too uncommon to lose a fair amount of weight and some muscle mass during this whole ordeal. You'll probably be able to bounce back faster after this because of that if zombification doesn't occur post-transition. And while I'm on this topic, as far as I know, the likelihood of the various end results occurring is no different with CET versus a normal transition."

When Nurse Bear was done explaining things, a lull of silence calmly swept over us. Squall said nothing in response to her answer, so I guessed that he must have either been fine with what she'd told him or possibly too scared to ask what else could happen. If he'd been a closer acquaintance, I would have fielded a couple of my own questions to help him out for his own good, but I didn't feel like it was my place to do so. Instead, I turned to him and offered what little comfort I could.

"I know you don't know me all that well Squall but…I'm free if you'd like me to come over and help you with things or just to lend an ear and keep you company."

He looked at me rather blankly for a good hard second before it looked as if the wheels were finally turning in his head.

"_You might want to take her up on that offer, buddy._" Nurse Bear conspiratorially whispered in his ear with a wink. "_Pretty and whip-smart ones like her are far few in between this place._"

I looked at Nurse Bear in mock-horror, or…well, truthfully it was real horror masked under a façade of mock-horror to avoid letting her and Squall clue in that I was actually mortified, but I digress. This wasn't the first time she'd casually (read: _super-blatantly_) tried to put me on a guy's radar if there hadn't been a girlfriend, or anything remotely girlfriend-like, who'd come to visit during the first few days of their stay here. Guess she got strong lone-wolf-y vibes early on from him, seeing as it wasn't even a few hours yet. Come to think of it, I wonder how Zone, the first victim of Nurse Bear's well-meant meddling, was doing. Hadn't heard from him since he left this place after losing his sense of taste, not to mention while he was still nursing a bad stomachache from accidentally eating something that most definitely was not the cracker he thought he was munching on.

"_Might as well," _he shrugged, _"…it's not like I'm expecting visitors._"

That flippant comment in the end punched me right in the gut. Or maybe it was the heart. I couldn't quite tell. All I knew is that I wished he was hug-receptive yet again because he'd just magically transformed into a teddy bear carelessly thrown in the trash that I wanted to stitch back up and give a loving home where he'd be appreciated and loved.

Wow…um, that was a rather loaded mental picture.

But still, I stood by what I thought. I hated unnecessary teddy bear neglect. Hated, hated, hated it with a passion. Don't even talk to me about movies set in a post-apocalyptic world where children are running away from something and forced to abandon the precious stuffed animals they'd dropped along the way. Ugh. Scenes like those still emotionally hit me like a ton of bricks.

"…_Still here?_"

I blinked. It hadn't been Nurse Bear pulling me back into reality; oddly enough, it had been Squall.

Nodding, I gave him a quick apology. "Sorry, you just caught me off guard a little." I admitted.

He seemingly brushed my comment off. "If help's rare around here like you say it is, it'd be stupid to turn it away." he pointed out. "…Not that I'm obligated to continue taking it if you get on my nerves."

Correction, Squall Leonhart was now no longer in the same category as abandoned teddy bears. Not now, not ever.

But why oh why did I choose not to leave right there and then after making a point of saying a _'screw you and your asshat-ness!' _right to his stupidly-perfect face.

Oh right, because _I _was the one with the abandoned teddy bear complex, still wanting to help even though I was still waiting for someone to stitch_ me_ up after everything I'd been through. God, I wish I weren't this self-aware sometimes. Namely because then I'd be blissfully ignorant of the sheer stupidity backing my sometimes-questionable life decisions.

Biting my tongue, I politely-slash-nervously said, "I'll be around sometime tomorrow, ok? I'm sure you and Nurse Bear have to go through things that'd be easier and generally less weird to do without a third wheel sticking around."

Excusing myself, I left the room without saying as much as another word. Well, I would have if it weren't a few words catching my ear and anchoring me here.

"…You don't need to leave." he calmly stated after I'd turned around.

I gave him a sober look. "I'm not sure there's much use in me sticking around right now to be honest with you. Well, unless if you want me knowing particulars about your medical history that I'm sure Nurse Bear's gonna ask you about."

"It's fine. I don't care." he reiterated before turning to the nurse, prompting her to start the questioning. After exchanging a quick glance with me to make sure I was ok with this, she did just that as I sat back down.

"Alright then," she began, walking around to grab the clipboard at the foot of his bed to hand to him, "Is all the information listed on this correct?"

He gave the thing a cursory glance at best before handing it to me of all people. I obviously assumed it was partly because he didn't want Nurse Bear to walk all the way around the bed again, considering I was practically within arms' reach to the clipboard holder slot thing at the end of the bed. Not to mention I guess he really didn't care that I'd just learned that he was six feet even, weighed 172 pounds at the last doctor's appointment he had and that he had AB negative blood or no listed emergency contacts in that moment I had the clipboard in my hands before putting it back in the slot.

After I'd learned all of that in those few seconds, Nurse Bear resumed asking him questions.

"I didn't get a chance to be familiar with your file just yet since the clerks were late in bringing up your admitting paperwork, but there doesn't seem to be anything filled out in the family transition history section – would you happen to know any of the particulars? Normally it wouldn't be a factor, but with CET, there's the possibility of predisposing genetic factors at play."

He shook his head. "I don't. Never knew my father or any relatives on either side. All I'd ever been told was that my mother transitioned shortly after I was born. Died after that."

The feelings reminiscent of those brought on by abandoned teddy bears came back to haunt me yet again despite vowing never to put him in the teddy bear category ever again. Still, I couldn't believe he was ok for me to sit in on all of this. It was one thing to think about how horrible it was to know that there were people who were careless enough to not wait to have children until after they'd gotten through transition out there in theory, but it was quite another to hear an account of the worst possible outcome of such a scenario firsthand as an adult when the black and white morality gave way to the shades of grey seeping in. Needless to say, I wasn't as quick to judge as I would have been as a teenager who still only had that patchy knowledge of information about transition.

Instead I wondered if his mother was around the same age as him when she transitioned or how awful it must have been to have only scratched the tiniest of surfaces of the life she'd have with her son, only to have this cruel curse snatch it all away from her fingertips. I wondered this instead of the alternative because…well, origins of the reason why I wasn't so judgemental anymore really hit close to home and what I'd gotten out of that past event had grown in unexpected ways once I was more educated about this world.

During a beautiful summer night when I was 16, I'd stayed at my then-boyfriend's house instead of coming back home before 11 like I was supposed to. Of course, naturally I didn't tell my father my impromptu plans and deliberately shut off my phone because I knew that he'd put an end to this immediately if I called him or if he could call me. Obviously I was only delaying the inevitable, knowing that there was a guaranteed 100% chance that he'd be waiting for me at the main entrance of our house whenever I decided to go home and face the music, armed with the usual lecture about respect and responsibility ready to shoot me in the face. Sure enough, the scenario I'd anticipated was the scenario I got – he was waiting for me – but, the lecture never came; he simply forced a tiny box into my hand without warning and waited for me to inspect it. Naturally, I did just that and soon wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole and die when the small print told me I was handed a packet of morning-after emergency contraception pills. He then told me straight up that I was to take them right in front of him.

What tipped me off that something was wrong was that as strict as he was then and always had been, I could always see the logic in whatever he did, even if I didn't like it. That afternoon, he was being more irrational than a math problem involving imaginary numbers – it was like he did not want to even fathom the mere remote possibility of a pre-transition pregnancy happening period to the point of not caring about anything else that had happened. Of course, even I get that it'd be hard to believe your sometimes-rebellious daughter when she says she did not have sex with her boyfriend even though she made a point of being unreachable that night, but skipping the lectures, invasive questions and declarations of disappointment altogether? That wasn't like him. Not at all.

Because of that, I humored him by just taking the pills without a fight and telling him that I was doing this even though I did not do anything with my boyfriend because it was obvious that something was bothering him a lot. I'd gotten an actual hug in return for those words – the first one I'd had in years. And just when I thought the weirdness was over, it just got even weirder when he told me that under no circumstances was I to ever consider keeping an unborn child should I get pregnant before I transitioned, even if it was conceived in wedlock. He said no more and walked away after that, leaving me confused because transition still a big black box of mystery to me then or rather the big T-Rexaur in the room that would not leave and my father would always ignore.

It was only after I'd seen the ugly side of transition firsthand when I finally understood why he'd acted that way once I pieced his odd reaction together with three other pieces of information I'd known before but had never really thought about. And that was that my mother and father had married at a young age, I was born when my mother and father were 20-turning-21 and 27 respectively and my mother had gone to a hospital the day after my sixth birthday and never came back home after that.

My mother had transitioned and subsequently died a month shy of her 27th birthday.

I'd never told Zell that his occasional observations about how some random person in the Center was the now-official oldest transitioner we'd both seen were always untrue until we'd both encountered Ellone Loire today. I'd also never told him, or anyone, that I was constantly worried of having a transition so late like my mother had, scared that my life would be in limbo for so long and be robbed of time because I did take my father's words to heart and then some when it all sunk in – after realizing what my father had to have gone through, despite all of our clashes, I knew I absolutely did not want to put anyone else through the same thing or anything remotely close to that situation.

Squall…I felt bad for him and somewhat envious of him at the same time. Was it better to have never known what should have been in the first place or to have loved and lost? Was it easier to cope with longing for what you never knew or pining over what should have been?

I set these questions aside for now, knowing that it was in his best interest to stay the course of my initial thoughts upon sitting on this bed and actually pay attention to the questions and answers instead of drifting off into my own little world again. If I couldn't have a life, the least I could do is give him the best fighting chance at getting through this as relatively painless as possible so he could start his on a good foot if the cards were in his favour.

"Strange." Nurse Bear commented, more to herself than to the two of us. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that she was biting back a little frown right now. "There should have been something in your files about her if that was the case."

"…I wasn't born in Galbadia. I just ended up in a foster home here." Squall replied in a rather blasé manner. Had the words come from anyone but him, I would have thought that was strange tone to adopt but…the blatant apathy on display was basically par for the course. "There's probably nothing on here because she wouldn't be in the national register. The registrar clerks back then probably didn't give a rat's ass about filling in documentation properly because she was dead already with no family to be heard of."

"…Ok, that would explain that. I guess we can move onto other pressing matters then."

For the second time today, I felt bad for Nurse Bear. This had to have been more than awkward for her, knowing that she was a mother of a little boy herself – even I was getting kind of uneasy about being here yet again despite trying to tell myself that he really did not care that I was sitting in on this info session. Heck, Nurse Bear could have been asking about any kind of unsexy, borderline-embarrassing possible medical condition and it would have easily been ten times more bearable around-

"Like where the hell my sister is?"

Spoke too soon. Make that twenty times more awkward instead. If it was at all possible, she looked even more down right now with what little light there had been in her eyes dimming.

"One thing at a time, Squall. Focus on staying as healthy as you can first." she calmly told him. "You won't have the energy to worry about that until this is all over with."

When she decided to leave straight after that, even I was confused. Exchanging a glance with Squall after she'd left the room altogether, I quietly told him, "…_Stay here. I'll be right back._"

After he gave me a simple nod, I darted out of the room immediately.

Something wasn't right and I needed to get to the bottom of this. I'd never seen her act like this before and it was honestly scaring me a little even though I already had it in my head that I wasn't going to back down from this.

But I still had to wonder…would I be going in over my head if I continued on this path?

That was the question I knew I wouldn't get an answer to unless if I tracked Nurse Bear down and made her talk.


	9. Chapter VIII – Is Hope Going to Count

_Chapter VIII – Is Hope Going to Count for Something?_

Some would say that making people talk was a science unto its own.

What made some people crack made others more resolute in keeping quiet – you had to know what made these people tick, what triggered them and what caused them to shut down completely with the preciseness and flawless execution of an Olympic-caliber gymnast. There was no one-size-fits-all approach, far from it – regardless of how badly the reruns of dated police procedurals I couldn't seem to peel my eyes away from wanted to make me believe otherwise by their almost-religious (and strangely 100% effective) use of the good-cop-bad-cop routine. But while there was no magical skeleton key when it came to unlocking people's memories, there was however, precisely one element that all of the possible interrogation styles all had in common despite the sheer volume of different tactics instigators had at their disposal—

…You always had to catch them first.

Looking both ways right outside the door, I couldn't spot her anywhere, which was weird because she definitely would have not had enough time to get behind the Nurses' Station counter and out of my line of sight, even if she would have made a mad dash for it once she was outside the room. Obviously, she must have gone leftward after leaving the room to go around the bend, or possibly into an additional smaller activities room right behind the open door in the outer-most corner opposite of the patient rooms.

A quick peek into the said room proved to be fruitless, as the place was as clean as a whistle with no hide or hair of Allison Bear to be found. After turning back around, I walked down the small corridor until I was within spitting distance of the windows that you could see the parking lot from. I looked down the hallway where the semi-private and private rooms were and didn't see anything but shut doors. If she went in one of them, there was nothing I could do – barging into rooms like those unannounced was kind of frowned upon, given that people paid money for the, y'know, privacy part of the room – but…

I turned to the right on a whim and noticed something I'd never seen before – the light on the keypad beside the double doors to the west wing was green, not red, telling me that they were currently unlocked. I reached for the handle of the door closest to the pad without so much as a second thought. I didn't know if I was going into a staff room or just a staff-only designated area to do…staff-y stuff but quite frankly, I didn't care. My plan was to claim ignorance if someone other than Nurse Bear saw me here.

The faint buzz I could now hear in the background told me that I must have pushed the door open in the nick of time because the door began to resist my noodle arms' valiant efforts at pushing and forced me to sidestep through the small gap I'd made. Figuring that the light on that keypad was now back to its usual orange-red, I lightly pushed the left door from the inside to see if it'd open.

…Ok, so _maybe_ I could legitimately claim ignorance here seeing as said door was having none of that.

Ignoring the dueling thoughts of _'this is just awesome - not'_ and _'man, I guess they really don't want patients stealing their food,'_ I decided to make the most of my entrapment and began to explore. The area just behind the doors was pretty much an empty corridor decorated just like the rest of the floor. No lockers or things to tip me off of the existence of a staff lounge – everything was in sterile, abrasive whites, accented with a hint of headache-inducing glare from the industrial-strength lights overhead. I couldn't decide whether or not this particular décor and lighting combo was chosen was to annoy the staff awake or to give them snow-blindness whenever they'd come through here to maintain a uniform level of grouchiness and irritation among all the personnel.

Walking further down the hallway, I spotted a row of lockers on the left wall but there were definitely nowhere near enough of them to accommodate my rough estimation of all the nurses who worked on this floor at any given time. As I walked even further along the empty hallway and even rounded a bend going rightward not once but twice, a thought occurred to me. Well, there were two of them, actually.

The first being that this was far too long and winding of a walk for this to be a staff lounge or even a space to do various scans, x-rays or other minor procedures – for staff that was always ping-ponging everywhere, this walk was just wasting valuable time to either check on other patients or to just be able to use break time to actually unwind for a little bit. I mean, while the nurses practically moonlit as ninjas where break times were concerned, they weren't the type to abuse it either and linger past than the time they were allowed to take per shift – I've definitely seen more than my share of nurses who came and went pretty quickly for doing just that.

Secondly, the more I walked down here, the more obvious it became that Nurse Bear couldn't have been here either; even if she had a good enough lead to be out of sight, there would have been no way the hallways would have been as silent as they were – I was practically 100% certain that I'd only heard my own footsteps all along this walk so far.

Apprehension iced my gut, but I had to keep going to see how far this spiraling, speck-free corridor would go even though I found myself slowing my pace by a lot. I didn't want to go further at this point, but it wasn't like I was going to get a way out any time soon either if I turned around.

A low feral growl stopped me dead in my tracks after rounding a third bend.

If I would have eaten any more than a few spoonfuls of cereal mush today, I would have been seeing it on the floor before me now.

Rows. Rows upon rows of violently writhing, ashen-coloured, bed sore-ridden bodies clad in hospital gowns in varying states of disrepair and filth, tethered firmly to beds by half-inch-thick leather straps keeping them stationary. I wasn't in any immediate danger, no – I knew how effective these tethers were at work – but seeing so many in one place like this in further stages of mind degeneration than I was used to witnessing?

…My throat constricted and eyes burned. The feeling multiplied tenfold when I could vaguely recognize some of the nearby drawn, hollow faces before me as people I'd once seen in another lifetime on the other side of these doors as human.

I'd thought all these people were relieved of their misery. I'd thought they'd been given peace.

But no, apparently they were left here to rot from the inside out, stripped of all dignity and subjected to god knows what.

Even in my silence, my presence alone caused all of them to look at me hungrily, their growls increasing in volume. I wanted to leave, to run away with abandon, but I couldn't see to will my legs to do the most simple of actions. Weakened, my knees gave out and I crashed to the floor butt-first. The impact should have jolted me awake, but the nightmare didn't loosen its death grip on me, it anchored me to the ground, made it too painful to even consider opening my now-shut eyes.

The only saving grace in all of this was that I'd known that Selphie's parents had given her a proper burial and had her casket open during the visitation 3 years ago – I'd heard she looked beautiful, though unnaturally-still, like she'd been made up to go to the prom instead of having a date with her grave. Even though I'd only heard of this secondhand from her parents, seeing as I wasn't allowed to leave because of the injuries I'd sustained and the psychological tests I still needed done then, the now-yellowing newspaper clipping they'd given me and that I'd kept to this day was proof enough of their claims.

Still…it wouldn't change the fact that none of these people would get to have the same. Even if the parts of their minds that made them human had died a long time ago…I just…

"…_help…_"

I willed my head to look up and find the source of that weakened voice. My legs were still wobbly but my arms had some strength and fight in them. I used them to drag myself forward, rationalizing that the zombies couldn't hiss at what they could no longer see below the foot of their beds because the numerous straps all the way up to their necks didn't allow for much in the way of manoeuvering or changing angles. Slowly but surely, I inched closer, holding my breath at the lingering putridness of the air around the beds. Every so often, I'd raise my head up just a little to see if a bed's occupant was human or not. Of course, doing so earned me a few loud hisses and guttural growls and—

A loud squeak of a mattress sent a chill down my spine. Instinctively, I scrambled backwards from noise's origin. Was one of them not tethered down properly? I…

The back of my foot made contact with a metallic bed post and I silently freaked out as my less-than ruler-straight trek backwards on all fours earned me a particularly shrill and blood-curdling shriek.

_Calm down, Rinoa,_ I told myself in a vain effort not to projectile vomit stomach acid all over the floor,_ they're all tethered properly – they have to be – why would they risk doing a crap job and having a doctor mauled or get killed?_

Ok, so I know what I was trying to go for there, but somehow the implied idea that doctors were willingly keeping these zombies as test animals or play things wasn't exactly giving me as much help as I needed.

"…_over here…please…" _

I purposely shifted my energies on this voice right then, blocking all my negative thoughts about this situation – if only for a moment. I realized that said voice was coming one bed back from the screaming banshee I'd accidentally enraged. _I could help this person,_ I told myself. _Just maybe… _

Ever so slowly, I mustered the courage to peer over the edge of the bed, wanting to be convinced that the speaker was still human, but not entirely sure of that if I wanted to be honest with myself.

As the top of the figure came into view from the other side of the bed, I steeled myself further, determined to not let the cascade of snarls shake me. I raised my upper body a few more inches upward and suddenly I was met with a face I was simultaneously hoping and dreading to see.

"Ellone Loire?" I called out, hoping I was loud enough so the growls wouldn't drown out my words.

She looked at me blankly. And something told me that she wasn't looking at me like that because she hadn't heard me correctly either.

Last thing I remembered was the white-hot pinch of a needle sending ice down my veins.


	10. Chapter IX – For Your Own Good

**Author's Notes - **FYI, in case if you missed it, Chapter VIII was posted on Christmas Eve._  
_

_-—-_

_Chapter IX – For Your Own Good_

It wasn't long after my brain could process things again and my eyes fluttered open when everything struck me like a bolt of lightning.

My head was just pounding with _'what happened,'_ _'where was I'_ and _'why am I not dead' _and it wasn't going to quiet down any time soon. No one was in this room and it was way too quiet for my liking. I didn't want to move my arms because of the possibility that I could have had a million wires secretly hooked into the back of my head and touching them would make me aware of their existence.

Ok…so maybe I was overdoing it with the sci-fi stuff, but still…I just couldn't accept that this place, this place I'd called a house for 3 years had something more going on beneath the surface when I'd just believed it to be just like a dreary, but _normal_, place to work because it'd seen so many unpreventable deaths and more to come. To borrow a cliché from thousands of bad young adult fiction books in love with the tag line…after what I'd seen, this, well…it changed everything.

I knew that donor cards existed for people who had their driver's license and wanted to be organ donors but as far as I knew, there was nothing to that same effect for people who transitioned into zombies. I mean, I didn't remember there being any kind of checkbox to check when I signed all the paperwork to stay here so…maybe it's changed since then?

The increasingly-hard-to-ignore nausea I was having told me that I was being delusional to even consider believing that. These people were being taken and kept there when they should have been euthanized.

But still…why was Ellone Loire there, then? I mean, she wasn't in great shape by any means, but the eyes that looked back at me were still dark, nowhere close to the ruby-red doctors needed to see before they could declare people 'officially un-savable.'

Ugh. This definitely wasn't helping my nausea any. At this point, maybe projectile vomiting stomach bile will incapacitate whoever drugged and put me here, affording me enough time to escape.

But…the only thing about that is…well, now that I thought about it, I think I knew where I was. The layout looked pretty similar to the private room Selphie was in all those years ago, plus it kinda didn't hurt my chances that there was literally nothing strapping and/or cuffing me to the bed I was lying in either. So theoretically, I could leave but a question still remained.

…Should I?

I swung my legs over the edge and before I knew it, I was tickling the surface of the floor with my toes. Then the nausea conveniently chose that moment to stop doing fake outs as my head suddenly started to spin; the bile finally made its appearance on tiles beneath my feet.

Awesome. Not.

"_Rinoa…I get you out of trouble and this is how you repay me? Tsk._"

The familiarity of the voice eased my nerves. Hopefully, I wasn't going to die after all – my would-be interrogation subject ended up finding me instead. Double awesome. Maybe if my throat stopped feeling like I was swallowing lit matches, I could maybe start practicing my bad cop routine on Nurse Bear; I already had the good cop part down pat and I'd always heard it wasn't a bad thing to switch it up once in a while.

"Saved me from the evil scientists, huh?" I tried to josh. Tried being the operative word, seeing as I probably didn't have the energy to sound convincing enough.

"Evil? Not exactly." After throwing a few dampened cloths over the tiny puddle of puke, wiping it away and casually tossing it in the dirty linens bin, she sat down and looked my way – her brown eyes harbouring enough guilt to betray her usually-chipper tone and self. "Unethical? Definitely."

"_So_…you knew they _were…_that they were doing this?" I choked out. The quintessential bad cop, I was not. _Bad_ly blubbering cop was more like it.

Nurse Bear's newly downward-turned lips just added onto the guilt written on her face. She knew. There was no question about it.

"…_Only recently._" she admitted. "…We can't stop them from doing this. The researchers, I mean."

"Yes you can Nurse Bear." I said. "You can report them to the local authorities with enough evidence…can't you?"

"Rinoa…I wish I could, but…they've bought our silence the moment we found out about them. These people are smart – they know how to keep those who know under their thumbs and cover their tracks pretty damn well." she ruefully began to explain. "They've made it crystal clear to us that if we tried looking for other jobs, we'd be blackballed from ever getting an interview with employers. That, and if we ever went public with this information that it can and will be discredited. Both situations have occurred so I have no doubt in their abilities at hushing up the truth. The only consolation is this is that we've managed to dissuade them from taking the newly-zombified with families in waiting."

I felt the pull at my lips' corners. "…Was that why Ellone was taken? They didn't realize Squall was her family?"

"Honestly…she never stood a chance from the moment she was carted in here." she lamented. "The peculiar particulars from her file piqued the interest of the head researcher, Dr. Odine, from the get go. The fact that it looked like she had no family made him more brazen than usual and insisted that she be taken for his testing without bothering to wait to see if her post-transition outcome was zombification. I tried convincing him that she did have family but it fell on deaf ears because Squall wasn't a blood relative. He just…he had to have her."

I fought back another wave of violent nausea…just barely. "So she was never meant to go home…ever? But…what about what you'd told him?"

"I know what I said Rinoa. And I realize it wasn't right to mislead him like that." she admitted. "But the truth is that what he'll go through with a CET transition will be very _very_ difficult to say the least. While there isn't any empirical evidence for this, I know that it would be downright impossible without hope."

"I understand that, I really do but…" I let out a sigh. "I'd promised him that I'd try to find out what had happened to her. Telling him the truth when he can't do anything about it just it seems cruel and yet…the alternative doesn't seem any better either. Even if he makes it out of transition without a scratch, he's not just going to leave and forget about her without a fight."

"Then you try and _fail_, Rinoa." Her voice suddenly went stern and her eyes misted over ever so slightly. "And I mean that. Do not get involved in this mess. You were lucky enough that I clued into where you were and was able to stop the security guard in charge of that wing from informing the researchers of your trespassing after he sedated you. You would have been permanently stuck here if I hadn't intervened. If Odine had been in there, nothing I said would have mattered."

I stared at her for a good second. Amid the fear slowly seeping in from the imagined scenarios in my head, something else dawned on me. "If you didn't know where I was until later, then who left the door unlocked and where were you? I went in there because I'd thought that it was the staff lounge and you'd gone in."

"I don't know who would have left it open. Everyone who has access to that wing is given two codes, one leaves the door movable twice as long than the other. My guess would be that whoever had come through last used their code with longer grace period and you just happened to walk in at the right time. And I won't pretend to be proud here, I was composing myself in a nearby room's bathroom." she confessed. "I'd gone back to Squall's room afterwards only to not find you there with him. I asked where you'd gone and he told me that you were looking for where I'd went. To be honest, if it hadn't been for his off-hand comment that my 'suspicious' behaviour was the likely reason you went, I probably wouldn't have thought to look there after checking the nearby rooms. Yes, I realize that the connection is tenuous at best, but you know me and my random word associations."

A single chuckle escaped in spite of myself. "No, suspicious is the right word here. I can totally see how your mind would jump to that place." I said before my tone sobered some during the silent patch which followed. "So…what did you tell the guard to let me go? I'm assuming that I owe you my firstborn or at least a big vat of coffee."

Strangely enough, she didn't smile. "Don't you worry about that Rinoa. It's been taken care of. You don't have to be concerned about anyone keeping you here." she quietly told me. "And no, you don't have to give me either. I've already got my hands full with Asher and the coffee IV I've got myself hooked up to is working just fine. Besides, didn't I tell you that I didn't want any of that getting lucky business happening under my roof?"

I actually groaned aloud at this. "You're ebil. So ebil Allison."

She quirked an eyebrow. "…_Ebil?_"

"Yes, ebil." I affirmed. "Evil and bad smushed together – hence creating ebil."

Her eyebrows quirked even further, if that was possible. "Meany, I got, but ebil? I'd think that evad or bail would have made more sense…well, not that last one since it's an actual word but…you get what I mean. Besides, I'm pretty sure you get ebil just by missing the v on your keyboard by going one key over so that doesn't count as a word smush."

"See? This is why you're ebil!" I theatrically sighed. "You uncovered my secret! You're so ebil, just admit it!"

"Alright, alright, I am ebil. I admit it. And in my ebilness, I need to ask you to promise me not tell Squall anything about what happened or go snooping more into this matter, alright?"

All traces of mirth were wiped away from my expression again. "You really mean this, don't you?"

"I do." she said in completely serious tone. "It's bad enough that we have no control over the outcomes of people's transitions and that the owners purposely short-staff us on this floor to impede us from making any real connections with the people we care for to accommodate Dr. Odine's paranoia - I would rather not have something happen to you or Squall when it could have been avoided altogether with a simple warning."

Her words plucked at my heartstrings and played them like harp. The song was melancholic, to say the least. Even though she'd said something that even I'd thought of, it was still sad to hear my thoughts confirmed and then explained some.

After giving it some thought, I realized that while they were probably perfectly aware that nothing they could do would change people's outcomes when they accepted jobs here, maybe they thought that they could at least make the transition a little more bearable – kinda like what doctors and nurses did for people with end stage terminal diseases at palliative care centers. And without the proper amount of staff to carry tasks out, even accomplishing that much was asking for the impossible, short of splitting yourself in two or more – I could only imagine how frustrating and unsatisfying that must have been day in and day out.

It must had to have taken its toll to be rendered as helpless and hapless as a random bystander to everything around you because of bureaucratic meddling caused by a man who didn't seem to be all there, judging by Nurse Bear's description. So with that in mind, I carefully picked out the words I was going to say next, hoping to choose the right ones to maximize the effect.

"I promise I'll stay out of this Allison." I told her. "It's the least I can do after you've keep me sane these past few years."

"Thank you Rinoa. That means a lot to me to hear that."

A genuine smile graced the nurse's lips. My not-so ebil plan had worked.

-—-

Walking back to the right side of the north end corridor alone, a strange calm encircled me once I'd parted ways with Nurse Bear who understandably had to resume doing her actual work around the floor instead of babysitting me. It was like nearing the edge of the abyss and losing your footing for a brief scary split-second where you weren't sure if you were going to fall in before being saved by a helping hand. Sure, you didn't actually fall in, but the moment of uncertainty was still etched in your memory in a permanent way – leaving behind scars and knowledge that would not and could not instantly fade.

I'd been _thisclose_ to something horrible because of its definite permanence which eliminated all the unknowns I was waiting to happen. I wondered what it would have been like to lose my hope, much like Squall might have had Nurse Bear told him the truth about Ellone instead of kindly omitting certain parts of it. It was a scary thought to say the least because even though I couldn't really say I had some for myself, it tended to creep in and make itself known in the most unlikely of places, surprising even myself.

After I rounded the bend, I stopped for a moment, contemplating something. Instead of walking into my own room down the hall, right before the Nurse's station, I walked past 1R altogether, then by the Nurse's station, then went all the way to 6L. Poking my head in there, I saw his figure resting in the bed, glazed over eyes fixed on the snoring teenager opposite him for what I'm sure owed to no other reason than sheer boredom. The room's light had dimmed considerably and that made me wonder about the time.

Glancing upward, the digital red lights of the clock on the opposite wall to the entrance told me it was past 5 pm, which surprised me. I was gone and out for that long? My stomach should have been growling at me by now.

"…_Was starting to wonder if you'd pulled a disappearing act too._"

My attention was yanked back down to the boy in the bed once more and my face reddened just a fraction. It could have been a new round of sedatives doing the talking for him but…it was so strange to have someone actually wonder where you were like that.

"Ah, sorry." I mumbled as I slowly walked towards him, my right hand deciding to tuck an errant lock of hair that was…clearly not long enough to loop around my ear. "Time…kinda escaped me. Nurse Bear was really hard to find. And I mean really hard."

"Doubt it."

Lowering my arm, I looked at him funny. It was bordering on equal parts of shock and disbelief, actually. "What do you mean, _'doubt it?'"_

"…You're a terrible liar." he frankly told me. "Nobody looks for someone for 4 hours. For a place this big, they'd give up after a half-hour, a full hour at best. Something happened."

Ok…so despite the slight glazed look in his eyes, maybe they hadn't given him more sedatives after all. I mean, nobody could be that perceptive with a cloudy mind. Still, I wasn't going to reward him with an answer just like that. I'd meant what I said to Nurse Bear.

"Ok, so maybe I did find her faster than 4 hours ago." I admitted, deliberately looking away from him as the words flowed from my mouth, my right hand clasping the left awkwardly for effect. Then I re-established eye contact once more, angling for a sheepish look. "I just…couldn't face you after getting the answer why she left so suddenly right away because…well, I knew you wouldn't like it and I'm sorry for getting your hopes up for some grand explanation for the weirdness. The truth is that, even though she thinks it's extremely weird that you weren't allowed to say goodbye, she really doesn't know what's exactly going on with Ellone either because her paperwork was brought up late too and she wasn't the one in charge of her assessment - she just didn't want you losing hope because she knows better than anyone that it's important to have some when you're going through a transition. She left the room four hours ago because she felt guilty about possibly misleading you."

"So…does this mean Ellone's dead?"

I shook my head, secretly relieved that my acting skills didn't suck as much as he thought they did. "No. It just means we're back to where we started. That is…assuming that all the hope you had for her isn't already sucked out of you, of course."

"It isn't." he said with a conviction which betrayed the tiredness in his voice. "…And it won't be until I've seen her for myself."

It took all the energy I had not to tear up in front of him. And then some.


	11. Chapter X – A Kind Act of Randomness

_Chapter X – A Kind Act of Randomness_

"…_Don't know why you keep bothering to come around. I still feel like complete shit._" he grumbled.

Today was Day 4. The first of which since Day 1 where he'd spared more than a couple of odd grunts during the few lulls of consciousness/wakefulness he'd experienced to tell me, well…to non-verbally hint, to go away. Just as predicted, he'd gotten it bad. It was honestly nothing like I'd ever seen before.

Normally, people on Day 4 would be spending their days asleep for half of it, 14-15 hours max, and be awake for the remander, beginning to be able to do every day activities like shower, eat, walk around but at that kind of lethargic pace people with high fevers had. Obviously, nearly all said activities also involved typical sick person blanket-cocooning behaviour but…it was usually the beginning of the turning point.

Squall…well, I'd be lucky to catch him awake and lucid for an hour a day total. The only saving grace with the extremely small windows of opportunity was that the moments of wakefulness tended to happen anywhere from mid-afternoon to the early hours of the evening and not at some ridiculous time of night. I could safely say that with the various 'fun things' hooked into him, he had not been out of that bed since I'd talked to him on Day 1. His hair was as slick as an oil spill and the odd time he bothered to crack his eyes open, he looked like he was out to sea.

Strangely enough, and I don't know how I'd never noticed this on anyone else before but, for some reason the transition's effects on his hair didn't extend to the patches of stubble growing along his jawline and above his lips - it was distinctly the same shade of brown, possibly a fraction darker, as his natural hair colour. Acting on my intense boredom on Day 2.5, I'd asked Nurse Bear if that was just my eyes playing tricks on me, but even she was flummoxed by that. Even so, she reasoned that considering he was the only male case of CET so far, and none of the other women happened to be bearded ladies from the circus, it could have possibly been par for the course as far as this off-shoot went. Naturally, I couldn't get away with asking a question like that without her mock-warning me to avoid asking him any inappropriate questions about this or go looking myself, but that was way besides the point and I…kinda should have known that I was setting myself up for a comment like that. But no, I never learn and always forget that she is truly ebil.

Anyway, the only upside of Sleeping Squall was that he really couldn't do anything other than heed Nurse Bear's words about focusing on this first. While I wished he didn't have to go through this, no man or woman should, I was kind of thankful for opportunity to delay the inevitable conversation with Squall where I'd have to tell him that there was nothing I could do for Ellone. I wasn't a fan of playing the bystander glued to the sidelines but…maybe, just maybe the lie would be kinder than the truth in this one instance. But why did it still make my stomach turn so much?

Pushing all my thoughts aside, I greeted him with a light smile.

"Because you feel like crap's the point." I told him sweetly. "Comes with the job, y'know?"

"…_Which is what? Professional headache?_"

"I was personally going for _'personal cheerleader,'_ but I can't say that's too far off the mark either." I mused aloud, poking fun at myself. "But seriously, I'm not here for me. I'm here for you, whether you feel like shit or not. Need anything?"

"…_A rock from the parking lot._"

Now I gave him a look. "Why?"

"_Because…I need it._"

I swatted him lightly. "If you're trying to shoo me off, you'll need to be more ingenious than that, Not-Jim."

Naturally, he groaned. "_…Fine. Go on a noble quest to fetch me a crystal instead._"

"Not what I meant, smarty-pants." I mock-chided him. "But whatever, I'll still go on a not-so-noble quest to fetch you something of value if that's what you want."

"…_Like what?_"

The wheels were turning in my head still, but he didn't have to know that. To be frank, I was surprised he'd taken the bait at any rate. I was honestly expecting him to grunt, turn his back to me and go back to sleep.

I lifted the pointer finger on my right hand and whimsically ghosted his lips but did not touch them.

"It wouldn't be a not-really-noble quest if I told you, now would I?"

"_But that makes no-_"

I edged the finger a fraction closer. "-Hush now. I'll have none of your questions." I theatrically declared. "You'll have the answers you seek in approximately…ten-ish minutes? Yes! In ten-ish minutes, you shall see the fruits of my labour."

He gave me a look to match my earlier one before I went all noble knight-y. "_…You're too damn chipper for 8 am._"

"It's 3 pm."

"…_Whatever._"

-—-

During my noble quest to fetch Squall an object of value, I found a trusty sidekick along the way. He'd agreed to accompany me after I'd saved him from a Ruby Dragon threatening to throw him off the mountain which he'd been walking along to reach his destination.

…Ok, so maybe I was laying it on a _little_ thick there, even for a thought that would hopefully never see the light of day outside of my head.

In layman's terms, I saw Zell in the cafeteria behind me and I let him take my spot to ensure that he'd get some of the cafeteria's inexplicably-famous hot dogs instead of letting him chance it by staying in his original spot which was five people behind me. Not exactly sure who the Ruby Dragon was here but… given my track record of ridiculous metaphors and conceits, I just accepted that it could quite possibly be the lady in front of Zell who had two distinct tufts of hair that weren't constrained by her loose bun. If one squinted hard enough, they could have _vaguely_ passed for mini-horns. Yep. It was totally her. Her and the sheer terror brought on by her…tiny ballerina-esque frame.

So_ anyway,_ after my mind was no longer preoccupied in working out metaphor stuffs, or at least failing horribly at doing so, I eyed the menu for small items that could pass for an object of value that Squall could possibly stomach. I knew that he probably wouldn't want anything big given he was on an IV for sustenance but…seeing as I was pretty sure that nothing in the gift shop would tickle his fancy (assuming he ever had fancies to be tickled) considering that practically everything was of the stuffed bear, flora or crazy-expensive chocolate variety, I figured that something small would be low risk on all fronts. Sadly, while I was pretty sure that the gift shop _did_ also inexplicably have crystal pendants and rings too, I figured that giving him women's jewelry would kind of be all sorts of wrong even though it'd probably make for the most epic facepalming moment the planet's ever seen. Not to mention, I _kinda_ wanted more than a snowball's chance in hell to befriend him eventually instead of just resigning myself to being nothing more than a professional headache-inducer.

So when it was my turn, I simply ordered two small smoothies, being a relatively-healthy option and all, and walked towards the door after giving Zell a sketchy wave with one of my smoothie-clutching hands. But of course, I didn't bank on the possibility of him being done eating within that relatively-quick span of time I was still in line after he'd gotten his stuff for him to accompany me on the way out.

"Hot date with fists of RAGE?"

"No. Just double-fisting smoothies." I deadpanned. "One daily recommended serving of fruit's just not enough, you know?"

He gave me a wry look. "That is why they have the large size for like a couple gil less than two smalls put together, my dear Rinoa. You're obviously trying to either bribe or impress someone with the awesomeness that is the cafeteria's smoothies. Kinda hurt that it's not yours truly to be honest with you here. I thought we were BFFs and all that jazz."

If I didn't have a smoothie in each hand, I would have pat him on the head just to annoy him slash flatten his hair.

"Zell, I'm pretty sure that BFFs doesn't stand for Buy Food Forever. I'd be broke real fast if I attempted to with you, no offense."

Zell snickered. "None taken. Letting me cut in line and getting the last hot dogs was good enough. You don't know how many times I've just missed getting them with my weird break times." he said, opening the door for me. "But in all seriousness, who's it for? Kinda curious."

I took a few steps before letting any words escape my lips. Even when I did, I found that my voice came out in an unnatural hushed tone, well, for me anyway. "The brother of the girl you brought in the other day. He went into transition not long after I'd talked to you last. Have you ever heard of Cloudy-Eye Transition before?"

Zell wrinkled his nose. "Yeah, I have. Man…that's some serious bad luck he's got there."

"Yeah…it's kinda why I wanted to cheer him up, if only a little. Today's the first day he's had enough energy to say anything to me when I visited while he was awake. He's been pretty much in a deep sleep for over 20 hours each day since he came down with it."

"That's pretty much par for the course from what I'd heard. There was a case in Dollet where a woman transitioned after giving birth to a baby and they just couldn't wake her up for feedings or diaper changes. The poor kid had to be watched by the nurses and given formula because she was so out of it all the time. …Rin?"

My heart froze, so did my feet.

"Do you know when that case was and if that mother made it out ok after?" I asked.

"Uh…I think that was 30-40 years ago and yes. Her and the baby girl were fine. Why do you ask?" I made the decision to continue walking. My face burned so bright, I practically unthawed myself.

"…Just curious is all." I mumbled in a tiny voice. Zell predictably snorted.

"Curious would have been asking me if they make it out ok, you did a full stop before asking that on top of when it happened. I'd ask again about why you asked, but I think I have a pretty good idea now."

"And that is…?"

"Well, I'm guessing that you were wondering if he was that baby since I didn't say it was a girl at first. But…that _kinda_ begs the question of how you know his mom had him before a transition."

"I…just happened to overhear him tell Nurse Bear that when she'd asked if he knew anything about his family's transition background. That was a little after I'd gotten her to see him in his room."

"That's weird. Why would he shout personal info loud enough for you to hear outside the room?"

If I had free arms, didn't care if I had poked out an eye with a straw or wanted to wear smoothie on my shirt, I would have facepalmed after hearing Zell say that in his _'wink, wink, nudge, nudge'_ voice.

"Ok. So maybe I was in the room with them all and he didn't care that I overheard him talk about his dead or non-existent family. So there. Happy?"

"Sorta. I get not caring but, why were you there in the first place? Nurse Bear trying to set you up with another 'potential' because if so, knowing that he was soon to be practically-comatose is a new low here."

Again, I lamented the fact my hands were full with smoothies. "Ok, so_ maybe_…she's been a walking ball of innuendos ever since I was trying to find a nurse to see him after I noticed that his hair turned black. I can't tell if she's being super-obvious about it this time just to bug me but, that's beside the point! …Which is that I was there for moral support since he had no one around."

All Zell did was smile some more. "As a friend, I have to tell you that you're waaay too wound up for your own good. Maybe you should give into peer pressure just this once and actually go for it. I mean, taking advantage of him while he's asleep might be kinda of in bad taste and definitely jail-worthy but I think you'd enjoy at least being around someone who can't talk back most of the time."

Did I ever mention that I wished my hands weren't full with smoothies? Cause I was seriously tempted to chuck mine at Zell's head. But I didn't. Mainly because I half-suspected his goading was a part of an evil plan to trick me into giving him my smoothie and I wasn't going to give into his nefarious ploy.

"So, basically the opposite of you?" I teased.

"Geez Rin, totally uncalled for."

I petulantly stuck out my tongue for effect right before retorting, "What comes around goes around, Dincht. You left yourself wide open for that one."

"Touche, Heartilly. Touche."

"Glad you see it my way." I smugly said. "But in all seriousness, I'm starting to think you're all conspiring against me with this whole, 'trying to foist me onto Squall' business."

Zell chuckled. "I don't know what foist means, but I can tell you that I'm bugging you because you're making yourself an easy target by acting all weird today."

"Funny. Didn't know caring was considered 'weird.'"

"No, you caring about people is just about as weird as chocobos being yellow." he reassured. "It's the whole 'I actually have to try to get you to admit something for a change' thing that's kinda weird since you're pretty much an open book around me any other time. Hence the reason for bugging you."

In spite of myself, the tiniest hints of a smile tugged at my lips. As much as it was annoying now, it was nice to know that someone knew you that well.

"It's nothing like that Zell." I told him. "I…"

…I really had a weird thought cross my mind — I wondered if he knew. I wanted to know if he knew.

"…I stuck around because I thought it was weird about his sister." I explained. "Not like I could do anything about it if something was off, but…one thing led to another in my head and before I knew it, I went into his room and asked how he was coping. Sure enough, they drugged him up nice and good but the strangest part was that he did not seem convinced that she was gone. Not in that delusional, 'it hasn't sunk in' kind of denial, but genuine doubt. He'd said that she was only sick for 3 days at home and then I noticed that his hair had turned black so I got sidetracked trying to flag down a nurse."

"So you think something's up?"

"Yeah…I kinda do."

We were in spitting distance of the elevators at this point but Zell had made a point to stop short and check our surroundings instead of pressing the elevator button straightaway; it was as if he was checking to see if staff was around. Maybe…he did know something after all.

"I was hoping you wouldn't say that." he said, scratching the back of his head. "Don't tell anyone but, I've been noticing a bit of weirdness lately as far as euthanized zombie-orphans go. Normally, if people haven't been claimed by someone within a month at the morgue here, I have to bring them to the nearest funeral home with cremation services because we can't use them for medical cadavers or anything like that. In the past 6 months…I haven't had any. Not just to transport, but in the morgue, period. I know, that kind of depends on whether or not we get orphans who zombify, but…if I had access to nurse files, I'd be willing to bet we've had at least a couple here and there that never reached the morgue. I mean, the odds are there."

So he didn't know…he just suspected. I frowned. "So there could be weird stuff going on?"

"Could be. But I wouldn't go nosing around in that business."

"Then why did you tell me that?" I indignantly countered.

"Honestly…I'm not good at lying. Even less so with best friends." he shrugged. "I figured that seeing as you'd probably weasel it out of me anyway, I might as well tell the truth from the start. Besides, while you might be optimistic about things, I also know you're not dumb either."

When I felt my stomach knot itself into uncomfortable bows, my gaze shied away from his earnest blue eyes.

"What if…I am a little dumber than you thought?" I said, still not able to make eye contact until a good couple of seconds had passed since the words left my lips.

"If you are, then I'd appreciate it if spent your time being an awesome friend for Ellone's brother instead and actually try to give him that smoothie sometime soon before it melts." Zell said in a solemn tone that almost felt out of place coming out of his mouth. "…Unless you want yours truly to have it instead, of course."

With that, I looked up and smirked. That was more like the Zell I knew.

"I will. And no, you'll have to get your own." I told him. "But if you want to know wh-"

"Not now." he cut me off, pushing me towards the elevators like I was some movable mannequin. "Tell me after he leaves this floor for good."

-—-

For once, crossing the threshold of his room didn't seem so daunting anymore. I mean, not that it really was but, there was always that flicker of nervousness and apprehension about intruding in someone's space and not knowing exactly if you'd be welcomed or not lighting up your insides. At least now, with these smoothies in hand, firmly hidden behind my back, I could confidently stroll in, knowing that my company would be wanted seeing as he was waiting for me to make the grand reveal.

Or well…I hoped he'd be.

Still, shanking away my doubt, er, _shaking_ away my doubt - but not the doubt that my mind was sound enough to avoid mixing up two _very_ different verbs despite having a single letter of difference – I sauntered in with as much gusto and peppiness as I could. Strangely enough, he was, A – sitting up and still awake, and B – not glaring daggers or doing the tired person's less effort-intensive equivalent to that.

No, he genuinely looked as though there was a hint of intrigue present in his expression.

"Pick a hand, any hand." I said in a sing-song manner.

"…Both."

I raised a brow. "_A_ hand Squall, not both hands."

"Fine. I pick whichever one will benefit me more."

"…" Aforementioned brow disappeared into my hairline. I half-suspected the possibility that he was fevering to the brink of actually having a sense of humour. "That's not how it works. You actually have to pick and commit to one – left or right – for better or worse. And before you ask me, I'm going by my left and right. Or…you know what, scratch that. I'll just show my wares and you can personally inspect them all you want to make an informed decision."

Presenting the smoothies to him at face-level, he just looked up at me.

"…There's no difference."

"Actually there is. One's in my left hand and the other's in my right." I wisecracked with a smile. "Also, one's plain strawberry and the other's strawberry-banana."

He grabbed for the one from my left – the plain strawberry one – and alas, the battle of dueling wits and absurdity finally concluded. I took up the seat right by his bedside and took a small sip of my own smoothie as I watched him peer into his own straw-ed and lidded plastic drink cup between his hands and not drink it for a good solid moment.

"It'll melt soon if you keep on holding it like that."

"I'm aware." he tersely responded.

"They're really good. Not too sugary or watery either." I told him after taking another long sip of mine, trying to make light conversation. "The cafeteria here's actually pretty decent all-round too. If you ever get off that IV and want something other than the trays of food they bring up, I can always get you stuff. All you have to do is ask."

As I was about to squeak in another sip, I really wasn't kidding about how good these things were, he looked at me with a certain amount of confusion peppering his gaze. "…I don't understand."

I lowered my cup. "Don't understand what?"

"Why you're doing this. I haven't done anything to earn it."

So maybe the expression of intrigue and the playfulness I thought I saw were mistaken. Maybe they were actually reactions of another sort, borne from thoughts rooted from vastly-different origins.

"A kind act of randomness is just that - me being random. There's no cosmic balance sheet involved here to keep things even, ok?" I told him, plain and simple, "I do things because I want to. I also don't do things because I don't want to. And right now, I felt like you needed some kind of silly little surprise so I did just that – I gave you a smoothie. You don't have to accept it if you don't want to. And if you happen to drink it, it doesn't mean that you owe me anything either. I mean, I'd like to be friends with you and get to know you a little better, but only if you're 100% cool with that and not just because you'd feel obligated to be friends with me on account of your sister."

After drowning him in all those dorkily-put truths, he took roughly a good minute to process and contemplate a bunch of things in his head, leading us into a silence that felt ten times as long as his expression was frozen over in think-mode. Then, when he finally decided to emerge from his invisible think-cocoon, he extended his right arm towards me and handed me his smoothie.

I…couldn't lie here. I was kinda crest-fallen as I accepted his cup with my free hand.

"My appetite's shot to hell right now." he explained. "…never been one for surprises anyway."

The corners of my lips suddenly upturned in spite of myself.

"So…if I were to wait and give you a raincheck on a smoothie until your appetite's back along with enough advance notice that I'm buying you one, you'd be ok with that?" I asked.

"…If it's with my own money, then maybe."

It wasn't a no. Or at least not one in my books.


	12. Chapter XI – Keep It Together

**Author's Notes **- Too tired to beta now, will check it later._  
_

_Chapter XI – Keep It Together_

"Are you a friend of his from school?"

I was being asked this by a random nurse after checking in on her second patient in his room. Sitting in the chair by the bed, I shook my head. While he didn't say no to me the other day, thrusting the title of friend onto him while he was asleep – and yes, I realized that the words 'thrusting' and 'friend' probably shouldn't ever occupy the same sentence ever — felt kind of wrong. Namely because right after he said his appetite was shot to hell, he doubled over not even a minute later and his stomach promptly took it one notch further, deciding that he needed to empty the whole lot of nothing that wasn't in there. Luckily my reflexes were fast enough to hand him the nearby trash bin but…I'm not sure if that really qualified me as a friend. It felt more like a minor promotion from professional headache to professional puke stain preventer…then again, I think that might have been a demotion instead.

…Yeah, it probably was.

In any event, I hadn't really been able to talk to him since and today was his Day 6. If he wasn't sleeping – which was at least now down to about 16 hours a day now – he was clearly in pain, near catatonic and most definitely not in the mood for talking or taking rainchecks on returned smoothies. I still visited because I'd meant what I'd said about being there even though he felt like crap and I think he appreciated it on some level. The reason I thought this was because I could catch glimpses every now and then of him looking at me while he was in a lucid moment where he wasn't completely incapacitated by pain and thought I was looking elsewhere.

Still, I wasn't sure that made us friends in the classic sense of the word. Personally, I thought that just made me a novice Squall-observer and made him wonder what the hell was going through my head to stick around like I had. Truth was that I was kind of anxious about missing the moment when his condition would improve enough we could actually talk about things. Of course, most of these anxieties-slash-unrealistic expectations stemmed from watching and reading way too many of those horribly-clichéd stories about Person A waking up after a medical emergency and Person B's the first person they see – ok, so it was another weakness of mine - but if I wanted to spill another truth, I was bored. Certifiably so. It was kind of like when you spend several days marathoning a really good TV show with box sets to catch up and once you do, it just becomes painful to wait a week at a time for one measly episode – never mind the summer and winter hiatuses. Those were just the epitome of suck.

…Where was I?

Oh right, actually attempting to answer the nurse instead of just staring at her.

"Oh no, just an acquaintance, really." I said, a hint of nerves oddly choosing this moment to crop up in the pit of my stomach in front of a virtual stranger. "I um…"

She flashed me a demure but earnest smile. "I'd say you're more than just an acquaintance if you're waiting be the first thing he sees when he wakes up."

I wanted to tilt my head like the way my old dog Angelo used to do whenever she was confused. Wanted to but chose not to because I knew that I would look nowhere near as adorable as my dog when she did it and end up looking like I wasn't all there instead. Or like I had a weird kink in my neck. Both were plausible scenarios, I thought. The one thing I did know for certain was that my face had to have been red from being winded from the 'Squall and me being an item' running joke. Ok, so maybe I was reaching a little for that pun-chline.

Bad Rinoa, bad.

"Well," I aimlessly rubbed the back of my neck, "He's been really sick and I'm kind of worried for him even though I don't know him too well since I've never really seen anyone have it so bad during the years I've been here."

She looked at me funny.

"…Years?"

Oh damn, I keep on forgetting that not every nurse knows me as the unofficial mascot of this place. She must have been a new hire or something who thought I was a visitor because I'd actually bothered to get fully dressed and presentable looking for a change. I couldn't help but sport a little sheepish look right now.

"It's a long story but yeah, I've been here for 3 years after a mix up." I explained, feeding her same vague lie I'd initially told Squall. "But I know how it is to be alone and going through something scary like he is right now so I thought he'd appreciate a familiar face sticking around with everyone else coming and going."

I have no idea why felt the need to explain myself seeing as she was just going to move onto her next half-asleep, half-coherent check-up patient and put this in the past, file this conversation under things that would not change her life whatsoever.

Her smile from earlier returned. "You might not think that you're his friend but I'd say that making the two weeks he'll be here a little less scary definitely makes you a good person."

And with that, she did just like I'd predicted – she gathered her things and walked out of the room, presumably to tend to someone else after leaving me with those words. Words that I honestly didn't exactly need despite the well-meaning intention behind them.

Then I wanted to shake my head at the absurdity of that feeling.

Him leaving, whether it was on his own two feet or in a body bag, was the goal, the plan, the whole point. He was still a stranger and not a friend like I said so…why were these thoughts of impending sadness burrowing into my brain?

Well, if I wanted to be honest, it was nice being needed – even if said need to be fulfilled was to prevent aforementioned puke stains – but I didn't that was it. Nor was it the fact that he was very handsome pre-transition – ok…so maybe it was a nice change of pace from all the acne-riddled or just simply boyish-looking teenagers getting admitted here that made me feel like some kind of pedobear for even having vague thoughts of that nature cross my mind, but that was it.

Maybe…this was a mistake, or maybe said mistake was my whole approach period. Even if I'd made a friend out of him, or anyone else for that matter, it was unlikely that anything would happen after the fact, whether it was platonic or romantic. I had no means of contacting any would-be friends once they were gone and it would be probably too much to ask for more than the occasional visit while they probably threw themselves into 'normal' post transition activities like attending post-secondary schools, getting their collective feet in the door for a job or just…well, sky's the limit. People change, they move on, time escapes them and so does a part of their old lives. Needless to say, I lucked out with Zell landing a job here so our paths would cross. But even then, I could tell that I was still on borrowed time with him too. I knew he was thinking about proposing to his girlfriend sometime soon-ish, and I had no idea what she did so it could be possible that he might go find another job or something to make it easier for the both of them.

I realized that my thoughts are going a negative, but still purely hypothetical, path once more but…loss is what I knew and it was also what I expected. Good things don't happen to me unless if they're fleeting. Looking at Squall, It dawned on me that finally succeeding after a long string of failure was much like when people sought revenge on others. Revenge motivates you to focus on a single goal to the point where it virtually consumes you and yet…once you accomplish it, nothing else changes. It doesn't bring back the person who was damaged, crippled or killed and make them whole again, it leaves you empty because once the goal is gone and the deed is done, all it does is make you realize that _you_ haven't changed, and that you'll feel this pervasive hollowness until you find that way to cope.

Looking at him now, I had 8 more days of this at best. I couldn't guarantee that he'd want to even be near me for those days, let alone think of the possibility that he'd make an effort to stay in contact with me while undoubtedly having to pick up the pieces of his life at the same time.

"…_Something happen?_"

Speak of the devil.

…Or rather groggily-stated question of the devil.

"No, not really. I was just sitting here for a bit." I told him. "I'd ask to see if you were feeling microscopically better but I actually remembered not to ask that this time."

He groaned. "…Telling me you remembered to not ask that question is pointless. But I'm sure you knew that already." he pointed out – a guilty grin immediately spread across my face. "…It's almost ironic that I feel marginally better than death warmed over today."

My heart skipped a beat or two. "Really?" I asked, "That's great! Maybe it won't hold as long as Nurse Bear said."

"…_Maybe._" he unenthusiastically parroted. I found myself trading in my guilty grin for a guilty grimace.

"…That disappointed that your legit excuse to tune me out's disappearing, huh?" I tried to josh. He looked at me.

"…I didn't hear any of that."

"Oh, well, that was nothing, I was just-" Then it clicked. "You're lucky that your free pass for being sick's still valid, buddy."

"…If this is lucky, I'd hate to see what unlucky is."

That comment wasn't helping my grimace any. It clear to see what his mind was fixating on and it was even clearer to see that the chocobo in the room that I was trying to make him ignore was starting to wark and kweh when I was hoping he'd stay quiet for a little while longer. But while I wasn't going to attempt figuring out what exactly the chocobo represented in what was sure to end up being another one of my weird and convoluted metaphors, I was most definitely going to attempt to stop said chocobo from running wild and destroying the furniture by distracting it with nonsense. No wait…that came out wrong. I was definitely going to draw _Squall's_ attention from the crazy chocobo using nonsense.

Yes. That sounded better.

"Actually, I can tell you how bad it would be. Unlucky would be me randomly deciding to lean over to talk to you like this." I got up from the chair and promptly bent over for effect; our noses were about two inches apart. "And instead of the minty-fresh breath you're smelling now, it would be epically-bad morning breath or possibly epically-bad coffee breath – that'll depend on whether or not I was in dire need of a caffeine fix in the morning. Anyway, I would talk to you about things you wouldn't give a damn about which is probably no different from now but I would be extra annoying about it. Then when you think it couldn't get worse, I somehow lose my footing and accidentally elbow you in the stomach. And of course, everyone and their mother choose that very moment to come into the room and they all get the totally wrong idea about us. Then they'll all make enough snide comments about getting a room under their collective breaths that you'll just want to crawl in a hole and never want to come back out."

As predicted, he looked at me as if I was mad so I cracked the biggest Cheshire grin known to man just to push the envelope a bit instead of standing up straight right away.

"Duly noted." he said. "I give your other victims my deepest condolences."

"Hey, I take offense to that. I never said I actually did this to anyone!" I mock-whined after taking a theatrical step back with my balled hands on my hips and trading my grin for a pout plus a scrunchy look.

"…Could have fooled me by how fast that nonsense spewed from your mouth." he dryly replied.

"No, that's just a byproduct of an over-active imagination, actually." I smartly explained. "My friend Zell the paramedic can attest to that."

"…So I'm not the only one subjected to these random comments?"

"Nope. But to be fair, Zell always dishes it back in kind so it's more like our thing rather than something I'm 'subjecting' him to. Though, now that I think about it, I think he started it in the first place when he was transitioning two years ago and he had nobody else to talk to at the time. Yep, I'm almost certain that he's the one to indirectly blame for all this."

"Whatever." he said, rubbing the inside corners of his eyes one at a time with his right pointer finger. "Just don't think I'm going to be your substitute for him because I won't do that kind of thing."

I couldn't help myself here, I had to snort.

"…What now?"

"It's nothing really." I answered. He didn't look convinced. "Ok, ok, I'll tell you. The thought of you being a substitute for Zell is just so absurd that I have to laugh – you couldn't be any more different. Well, from what I think know about you anyway. See, he's always been a borderline hyper-active goofball and I get the impression that you're kind of the quiet, always-serious no-nonsense type, the reasons for you being here notwithstanding. Fair assessment?"

"…Fair enough." he conceded.

"Good to know." I sat back in the nearby chair, clasping my hands together. "Are you feeling up to eating something or just need anything?"

"No." he answered, taking a moment to purposely look away before catching my gaze again. The next words out of his mouth were almost…shy? "…Have you learned anything about my sister?"

…I guess the kwehs and warks were too loud to ignore. Trying to keep my expression neutral, I scrambled to come up with a carefully-worded answer that wouldn't squash his hope outright.

"No. Anywhere she could have been on this floor is behind passcode-locked doors that I don't have access to and I haven't overheard anything about her at the Nurses' station." I lied. "I did ask my friend Zell to see if she was ever transported to the morgue on the 3rd floor like they always do before they're released to family or friends and his records say that she hasn't."

"So in other words…she's being possibly experimented on for God knows what reason and you can't find her." he darkly stated.

I wanted to hit myself for saying what I had that way; I thought he would have taken it as a positive sign that she was probably still alive instead of assuming the worst of the ambiguity. Ugh…I really should have banked on him interpreting what I said like that, considering he didn't seem like a Mr. Sunshine, Rainbows and Fluffy Rabbits kind of guy. But no matter what I could or should have done, I knew that I didn't deserve to be spoken to like that – being frustrated and worried about his sister wasn't an excuse.

"Look, don't make _me_ the bad guy when I agreed that I'd try to help you, _try_ being the key word." I shot back. "I'll try and check unlocked rooms on other floors later on but there's only so much I can do. Even if I did know where she was and could get there, I won't be able to do anything until you're all better to take her out of this place since I'm pretty sure that hiding her under your bed or mine won't be an option."

If I wanted to be honest, I surprised myself there by thinking of that last part on the fly like that. I hadn't really thought of that before and judging by the look on his face, neither did he. Regardless of the fact I did bring up these valid points, I wasn't anticipating an apology for his harsh words so I took his silence as proof of his realization that he'd done wrong and moved on.

"Listen…I'll be here later if you want me around, ok? I just…need to step out for a little bit."

When he nodded, I left. I wasn't expecting him to say 'wait, don't leave' or anything like that to get me to stay but…it would have been nice to hear some kind of indication that he did want me visiting again for its own merits despite being kind of annoyed at how he was treating me like an underperforming employee instead of appreciating what I _was_ doing.

Ugh…my thoughts are making no sense and this sounds all sorts of wrong. What is with me today?

"Rinoa…?"

I turned around from the threshold of the 6L door, not knowing what the heck to expect here.

"Yeah?"

"You'll find Nurse Bear on the 3rd floor if you go there." he told me, much to my confusion. "…I overheard the nurse who just left a few minutes ago tell someone in here that she'd been transferred to that floor when he asked where she was. Maybe she could help you. Also, I…apologize for what I'd said earlier. You're…right."

My face burned bright red.

Not only did the bugger apologize but this Nurse Bear business was worrisome. Plus it also meant that he'd overheard me talking to the nurse earlier. Talk about awkward.


	13. Chapter XII – The Changing Tides

**Author's Notes** – Again, will beta later. I am le tired.

-—-

_Chapter XII – The Changing Tides_

-—-

_**3**__**rd**__** FLOOR – SURGERY & OTHER PROCEDURES**_

Reading that line in the floor listing plaque right beside the elevator compelled me to steel my nerves and take a steadying breath.

After a walk around the second floor circuit, I decided that I needed to take Squall's suggestion and get to the bottom of this. And so here I was, fresh out of the elevator, looking at the plaque to make sure I was actually on the 3rd floor even though I'd made sure that I'd pressed the correct button.

I was stalling, pure and simple and I didn't care that I was well-aware of this. I needed this moment to collect myself and order the jumble of thoughts tangled up inside my head. I wouldn't bother checking any of the rooms, I knew that much from the get go, but I needed to figure out what I was to say to Nurse Bear if I found her.

Getting transferred here was not a coincidence; it just had to be related to her saving my sorry behind from the clutches of the scientists running the show behind the scenes. But what I had to wonder was the reason behind not even telling me and me having to hear it secondhand like I had. Did she just come to work today and get told once she got here for her shift? No. She was always had steady 1pm to 11pm afternoon shifts and it was only a hair past 11 am right now. Seeing as I'd spotted her flit around the second floor yesterday like normal, that was unlikely. Or did that just mean she was told yesterday? Ugh. I guess that meant that both possibilities that she kept it from me deliberately or just accidentally were still there. Not to mention the ones where she requested the transfer herself too.

Needless to say, it didn't help the knots in my stomach.

It boiled down to two simple, unsettling scenarios – either my stupid stunt was the breaking point for her and made her want to transfer to a less-drama-filled floor or my stupid stunt made someone else force her to transfer to another floor.

And even though I'd made it all the way here, part of me wasn't ready to face that the reality here was that I was to blame and someone else suffered for it. No, I was still aimlessly staring at the plaque and I didn't care who saw me. I blamed my Caraway genes for my affinity for staring at things despite the handicap of lacking the intensity that grey eyes brought to the game. Everyone else will just have to deal.

Though…remembering my past sarcastic thoughts about my relatives having staring matches for dates, I had to wonder if this would count as the start of a torrid affair with an inanimate sheet of hard plastic? Yeah, I guess it would. Totally a romance for the ages that would be eventually novelized-slash-exploited by the shittiest of authors. A girl in love with an inanimate object or _objects_ – 'cause I'm pretty sure that forced and badly-written love triangles are still a staple as far as those kinds of books go - would become a new phenomenon. People who weren't diehard fans would make fun of the horrible sex scenes - after all, they'd have the preteen market to corner so _those _types of objects as the love interest would be out of the question - and I would be sad because I wouldn't see any royalties to compensate for my embarrassment.

Ok, so it was official.

I, Rinoa Christine Heartilly needed to stop procrastinating because I was starting to even weird myself out. _Badly._

Ungluing myself from this spot, I started to walk towards the place that would have been where the Nurses' station would have been on the second floor – it was only a wall here, however. From there, I had a simple decision to make – go left or right? Looking in both directions, I took the non-populated side; I couldn't spot Nurse Bear anywhere yet and I figured it would increase my chances at finding her before possibly being asked to leave by another doctor. Sadly, my mascot-ness didn't exactly transcend to floors other than second floor so the surgeons would probably think that I was just a visitor who was lost.

Walking down the left corridor, I kept a brisk pace and my head low, trying gain as much distance as possible without breaking into a noisy jog. If I thought that smell of anti-sceptic was harsh on the second floor, this hallway had to be ten times as worse despite everything else – the wall colour, tiling and even layout – was virtually identical to that aforementioned floor. Ugh. My nose hairs felt like they were getting burned off and I was half-tempted to hold my breath. I didn't because I knew I wouldn't be able to not start panting loudly once I attempted to start breathing again so I just started mouth breathing instead as I rounded the first corner.

But it didn't matter what I did because my breath was knocked out of me in the same way – Nurse Bear was there, having come out of an open door. I had no chance to prepare; we locked eyes almost immediately and I couldn't help but notice the dullness in her normally-warm brown eyes. I didn't like that I'd seen them look so different from the eyes I'd known for three years yet again within the span of less than a week.

"Um…hi Nurse Bear. Funny to see you here." I lamely greeted. The lameness of it made her frown.

"Rinoa…you have no business being on the third floor. Please go back to the second floor or the cafeteria." she calmly told me.

My stomach bottomed out in disbelief. I had to ask myself, _did that really come out of Allison Bear's mouth?_ The same woman who'd took it upon herself to be a guardian-like, possibly mother-like, figure to me and always gave me the time of day no matter how busy she was? Because that didn't sound like her at all – all that the coldness came from an alien, it just had to. She was my friend. She wouldn't speak to me like I was some kind of disobedient child. She sure as hell didn't even while she was warning me against pursuing that matter with Ellone.

"They made you do this." I spoke with a small measure of growing, but still fragile, confidence. "You wouldn't be here if they hadn't. You liked being on the second floor!"

"I'm not at liberty to say anything to you. I wasn't even supposed to speak to you period." she curtly told me, in a flat, emotionless tone. This…this felt like betrayal. "…I'm sorry but I need to go."

As she left, walking past me to disappear into an open door that quickly closed and locked behind her, I just stood still. My feet were glued to the floor and I was too emotionally-paralyzed to move – banging on the door, screaming and yelling in vain for an explanation that would never be given to me wasn't even an option to explore. It hurt too much.

All I could do was cry my eyes out and refuse to be budged from my spot by the passerby doctors and nurses until Zell came. Even then, he had to carry me out of there on his back. The worst part was I couldn't even explain why to him and he didn't push me, reminding me of another low point in my life I wish I could have left buried in the past.

Then I started crying even harder at the realization that he was my only friend in this world left and if he left for greener pastures or was taken away from me for whatever reason…I'd have no one. I'd truly be alone, left to rot in this hellhole until the day I drew my final breath.

That realization hurt. It hurt so goddamn bad.

-—-

The next few hours went by in a blur. Cocooned in my bed's covers and hidden away from the rest of the world by having my divider curtains not drawn back for once, I dared to poke my head out of the sheets and open my eyes to let some of the weak March sunlight in, struggling to remember the words spoken and promises made to me by Zell as the feeble rays still managed to burn my retinas. They hadn't sedated me - sadly, the practice of drug first, ask questions later wasn't popular here – but it didn't really matter as my own thoughts had done a pretty damn good job at numbing me inside out anyway. Everything seemed so distant, so far removed that I wondered if I was dreaming. No, dreaming implied good things. This was a nightmare – one where I was trapped in this body with nowhere to go, no hope to be found.

I closed my eyes again. Opening them in the first place was a waste of time, why was I bothering? There was nothing for me but pain, anguish and whatever the hell else life could dangle in front of me that I would never have.

But fate, as I knew, was indeed a fickle thing. Not even a good minute after I'd shut my eyes that I heard the light swishing of moved curtains and a slight creak of the chair facing my back beside my bed, telling me that someone sat themselves in it. Curiosity was my greatest downfall, and it probably always would be – I couldn't let the mystery, as tiny as it was, be just that – a mystery.

I shifted around to face the other way, opening my eyes and blinking them hard.

"What are you doing here Squall?" I croaked.

He still looked a little worse for wear but the facial scruff was gone and his jet-black hair considerably less oily and matted – it was clear to see that he was feeling well enough to manage a shower and somehow mysteriously acquire shaving supplies.

"…Something happened if that friend of yours carried you in here." he answered in a less manner of fact way than I'd been anticipating.

I couldn't tell if that was actual concern for me or if it was just for my ability to carry out the promise. Despite what common sense would dictate, I kinda thought it was the former even if he'd deny it outright. And despite the fact that I was ignoring common sense in my thoughts, I did decide to exercise some in my actions by not putting him on the spot about that. It was…kind of nice not to bother about semantics like that. But even so, it didn't change the fact that I had to answer him without _really_ answering him.

"I hadn't eaten since lunch yesterday and it kind of caught up with me." I fibbed, using the first thing that came to mind. "It was just a dizzy spell. Don't worry about me."

"You're lying."

I should have denied his accusations but I decided not to, going against common sense again. I didn't have the energy and quite frankly, I didn't want to sabotage the hopeful end to our last conversation – as fleeting as I knew his stay would be and as pointless as making friends in transient circumstances was, I still wasn't the type to actively try to burn bridges.

"I was." I candidly admitted. "I just…don't know how to explain this. And honestly, you have enough on your own plate as it. You don't need me to burden you with something personal that doesn't affect my promise to you."

"You were carried in from the elevator." he said point blank. "It does affect me if your personal matters involved Nurse Bear."

I was a little taken aback and maybe a little impressed. "She's not helping us. She can't." I told him before leaning forward and going into a low whisper. "…_She's done all she can already._"

Then I caught something. I scooted a little closer to make sure I wasn't seeing things or that it was just a trick of the light.

"…Your eyes," I found myself saying – I felt like I was somewhat beside myself, "…did you notice that they went back to their natural colour?"

"…No." he said, the hint of equal parts confusion and disbelief in his voice corroborating that no.

In that moment, I shed the cocoon of blankets and left the pity party of one to start fishing in the tiny drawer beside my bed on the left to find a compact. After locating it, I opened it and placed it in front of his face. When he grabbed it, I noticed that his fingers weren't particularly warm. It left me wondering…did he also not have a fever anymore? I stayed silent for now, waiting until he could see what I saw first.

When he'd quietly returned the compact to me after confirming what I had said, I wasted no time. "Do you still have a fever right now or did it break while I was gone? Your hand didn't really feel warm like you did when I handed you that smoothie days ago."

Almost sheepishly, he answered, "…It did. I take it that it's not supposed to?"

"No. If you were a normal case and not CET, it wouldn't be too high but still there. Your eyes definitely shouldn't be back to your normal colour either. But I'm pretty sure this is a good thing." I tried to reassure. "People who turn into zombies wouldn't have their normal colour go back. Looks like you'll make it out of this ok."

He looked at me skeptically. "If this is a new precedent for this…I wouldn't be jumping to conclusions."

"To paraphrase our favourite nurse, being a _'special snowflake'_ is fine, really." I started to explain with a touch of humour while trying not to think too much about who I'd referred to. "There's no real uniform way to go through transition – it's pretty much like puberty that way. Some people go through the stages faster or slower and some people get a hit with a ton of zits while others stay pretty much blemish-free – nobody puts too much stock into how fast you go through it or whether or not you get a serious case of pizza-face. In your case, you just happened to be a short little shrimp and then next thing you know, bam – shot up to six feet tall and suddenly everyone and their mother wants you to sign up for the basketball team because you're towering over everyone in gym class."

He gave me an incredulous, and possibly slightly and secretly amused, look. "…That was the strangest metaphor I've ever heard."

In spite of myself, I snorted. "Trust me, that's tame by my standards. I mean that. You don't want to hear the ones I've thought up in my head. They'd make your head spin if I didn't keep them up in there and actually said them out loud. I wasn't lying about the over-active imagination thing. It's kind of a side effect of living inside my head for so long with nearly no one to talk to here – keeps me sane in a way even if my metaphors are usually anything but. I never used to be like that before coming here. Or, well… it wasn't _as_ bad."

"…I get that." he calmly said. "It's…not always easy living inside your head all the time."

I smiled a little. Part of me couldn't believe that he was actually talking about anything other than how he felt like shit, Ellone or our noble quest to find her. Maybe he was different when he wasn't waylaid by illness with people who weren't total strangers who were oddly attempting to pry in his life? Who knew.

"Yeah, no argument there." I agreed, before pausing for a second to deliberate on something. "…For whatever reason, Nurse Bear isn't allowed to talk to me anymore now that she got transferred to 3rd floor. I kind of lost it. Making and keeping friends or just having some kind of friendly chit-chat is hard to do when this place isn't meant for any of that, you know? Spending my time in the library with my nose in a great book just doesn't cut it sometimes."

He shrugged. "…And you can't leave because you don't have the means to?"

After getting over my momentary surprise that he'd remembered what I'd said a couple of days ago, I scrunched my face and shook my head. "Even if could, it'd end up being the same situation, just in a different place. Selphie and Zell were my only friends growing up because I had dark hair and eyes and was pretty much in and out of hospitals a lot. I wish my father would have let me be educated about transition though - then I could have at least figured out what was making people uneasy around me. Maybe I could have tried to dye my hair another colour to make things easier too."

"…So your mother died in a transition?"

My eyeballs wanted to jump out of their sockets. "-How did you…?"

"You've only referred to your father when you said you couldn't go home. You used the past tense when you talked about your mother's birthday. And if I did my math correctly, she had you at 21 so it wouldn't be all that impossible – makes sense given that not letting you know about transition seems like a stupid decision, potentially suggesting an illogical knee-jerk reaction of some kind fuelling that choice."

I was still so floored that I couldn't even question why he asked that in the first place – for some reason, I just chalked that up to poor-ish social skills and let it go. "…You are too smart. Way too smart Squall." I told him. "You need to be a federal secret agent once you're out of here or something as equally as detective-y."

"He's not the only one who's detective-y." a familiar voice interjected. I didn't need to see his face poking through the curtains to know who it was. But when he finally did just that, Zell, Squall and I ended up doing this weird kind of three-way stare thing - I think it was sort of borne from a combination of Zell and Squall not directly knowing each other, thus making the former's intrusion kinda awkward, and my aforementioned affinity for staring coming into play. This stare-a-thon would totally be the inspiration for the greatest love story ever known, screw the whole a girl and her plaque thing.

…_And_ I think I puked a little in my mouth just now. I loved Zell like a brother so that thought was just…no, god no.

"So you're detective-y too?" I asked, trying to ignore the additional _'no, oh god no'_s challenging my capacity to think straight.

"Yeah. And you're not going to like what I found out." he said, all of his usual mirth absent from his voice. My stomach was doing flips already. "Nurse Bear was found dead in one of the bathrooms. And I don't think it was a suicide."


	14. Chapter XIII – Tempest

_Chapter XIII – Tempest_

"_Why the fuck are you telling her this right now and like that?_" Squall angrily whispered.

It was official - we were in bizarro-land. This was not real life. It couldn't be. It just…couldn't.

"_Cool your jets, dude – there's a damn good reason. And it's that Rinoa could be in danger too since she was friends with her._"

But apparently Zell was still convinced that it was reality we were dealing with so he matched Squall's tone, getting the hint that he'd said that insane statement too loud, even though we were in a room full of sleeping beauties with no doctors around and Zell's head was poking through curtains that tended to muffle sound a little.

At that moment, he walked through the curtains completely and made a point to make sure that the two sides perfectly overlapped each other. Soon after, he handed me a tiny folded piece of paper – one that had my name on it in what was undoubtedly Allison Bear's handwriting.

"_That fell out of her pocket sometime after she was transported out of the room before examination – I just happened to pick it up when no one was looking._" he softly explained. "_I haven't read out of respect for her and you but if it has anything to do with what I suspect, she might not be the only target._"

"…_Suspect what?_"

Naturally, Squall was clueless as to what Zell was referring to but I raised a finger to silence him for a moment. Even though I would have preferred to be alone with this, I needed to know what this scrap of paper said – for myself and to confirm or deny Zell's suspicions. And after quieting Squall, I leaned back against the headboard and brought my knees up to my chest for a little more privacy.

Unfolding it, the first thing I noticed was that the handwriting was pristine without any discernible slant to the letters – this meant that she'd written it at a leisurely, natural pace, making me figure that it was penned sometime before_…it_ happened.

_I realize I shouldn't be giving you this letter, but today's exchange made me feel horrible knowing that I've let you down when you've already gone so much during these last three years. The last thing I want is to make you feel like you've done something wrong or that I've changed floors because of some personal reason because it's the furthest thing from the truth. The truth is that I was forced to by Dr. Odine and his staff of scientists and was told not to speak with you unless if I wanted us to face severe consequences – I think Odine suspected that we were plotting something even though we've had the discussion about not pursuing this and he was made aware of the decision we'd made. I don't know what measures, if any, they've taken to make sure I follow their terms but please, for your safety, do not come to the 3rd floor or approach me should we happen to cross paths for smoothies. I'll find a way to discreetly keep in touch with you - even if it's by chicobo mail. Don't you worry. :)_

_Your friend,_  
_-Ally_

I couldn't unglue my eyes from the creased piece of paper I was holding between my hands. I should have believed in her, believed in the possibility of secondary reasons forcing her hand. My temper tantrum probably drew attention to our brief interaction and cost her life. I just…

My eyes burned, closed shut with the cracks filling themselves to the brim with tears. I just couldn't believe that what I had between my fingers was all that I'd ever have left.

"_It's…it's what you thought._" I choked out before I had to set the damn page aside and bury my face into my knees. I couldn't hold it in any longer, the sobs just overtook everything and I couldn't stop shaking. This couldn't be real life…it just couldn't…

I didn't bother say anything when Squall spoke up again, asking, no, _demanding, _to know what the hell was going on or when Zell stubbornly refused to answer him – I was just so sapped that I…

Then Squall got up and, to my surprise, I jolted awake, my body temporarily freed the sedating effect grief was having on me. Even though he had to have lost a good 5-10 pounds since transitioning, the fact remained that he was still towering over Zell and his intimidation factor was definitely intact – especially when there was so little space to begin with anyway. I leapt forward and instinctively grabbed Squall's left hand out of fear that some kind of fight was going to break out. He looked back at me with a definite concerned look crossing his features.

…Features that included full head of hair that was suddenly losing its inky hue right in front of me.

It was so…awe inspiring. Enough so that I had trouble getting words to come out of my mouth in a somewhat-intelligible way…even more so than I'd originally anticipated.

"…_Don't._" I murmured. "Fighting won't help."

"…Wasn't going to." he told me before looking back at Zell when I'd finally let go of him a good couple of seconds later. I still couldn't believe how not-feverish he was to the touch, how he'd passed through transition in a record 6 days. With a deliberately-calm but also firm tone of voice, he asked Zell, "-If she confirmed what you suspected, what happens now?"

Zell looked almost dumbfounded. "Uh…I was going to suggest that you two stick together for the time being until I could work out a definite plan but…that might not work since you look like you're coming out of transition already."

"It's only been 6 days. The nurses won't let me go that fast until they figure out why I went through it so quickly. I'll be able to stay until you think of a plan – just make it quick."

Zell turned ever so slightly to look at me. "You'll be cool with that?"

I weakly nodded.

"Alright. I gotta go because Amy's waiting up on me with the car but I'll check up on you sometime during my shift tomorrow, that ok?" he said, prompting me to nod again, "Ok, then I'll do that. Sorry for dumping this all on you like this Rin but-"

"-It's ok, really. I understand – it was important to tell me even though you were strapped for time." I told him, causing Squall to go back to his seat when my comment earned me a thanks and a hug from Zell before he reluctantly left. When he disappeared behind the curtains, a few more tears I'd staved off rolled down my cheek. I wiped them away in the vain hopes that it would keep them at bay and stop half of my face from looking like I was caught in a torrential downpour in front of Squall.

…Then I couldn't help but realize how ridiculous that sentence was considering that Squall's name was also a noun that meant a wind storm usually bringing rain or snow. Then there was the fact that it was also a verb that meant crying or wailing loudly.

Yes, I was totally trying to stop my face from having squalls and myself from squalling in front of Squall. Cripes…I know it's kind of in bad taste to speak ill of the dead but, did Squall's mom hate him or something? Talk about a loaded namesake. No wonder his health cards wanted to conspire to name him Jim. Even still…Squall suited him, connotations of windstorms and wail-storms aside. I couldn't explain it…just like I couldn't explain this train of thought…at all.

I lied down on my side, facing the subject of my random-as-ever thoughts. Squall's eyes caught mine and he looked…slightly on edge.

"…You don't have to stay." I told him.

"I don't say things I don't mean." he calmly replied. "But I need to know what Zell was referring to. Things like this don't happen to people without a reason."

One blink and I was back to square one with my eyes welling up again. So was he judging by how I'd noticed his hair going inky again before the water in my eyes made it impossible to see.

I didn't say anything though. I just cried and he let me, not saying a word himself either. I appreciated it as much as I'd wished he wasn't sitting where he was at the same time. It was awkward and not in the sense that my makeup was running and giving me the oh-so-attractive raccoon-slash-goth look, it probably was but that wasn't the point, it was knowing that he had no idea that he was already entangled into this mess.

Even still, I realized that if I wanted him to stay out of this and uphold my promise to Allison, I needed to wipe away the tears, pretend to compose myself and tell him the truth so he wouldn't go sleuthing on his own. Sure, it would be an omission-riddled and carefully-worded version of the truth, but it wasn't lying if he was the one who drew the wrong conclusions, was it?

Well, the only way to know for sure was to put the theory in practice. And so, I grabbed a few tissues, wiped my eyes a little and mustered the courage to keep fresh tears from raining down while simultaneously swinging my legs over the bed's edge, daring to sit up and face him in order to re-establish eye contact.

"_On that first day you were here…I accidentally found out about something I shouldn't have known about and Nurse Bear…Allison saved me from certain doom – the real reason I was gone four hours was because I was out cold for most of that time._" I whispered to him. His still-blue eyes looked captivated for all the wrong reasons; I thought I saw a touch of anxiety as well but it might have been my imagination. "_When I was looking for her, I stumbled across a room with a bunch of zombies tethered to beds and before I knew it, someone sedated me. Allison…she saved me from being kept in that room. Sometime after, I learned from her that there were scientists experimenting on a handful of them to find a cure instead of euthanizing them like they were supposed to. The staff here have little to no power against them – they get blackballed for other jobs and discredited if they try telling people what's going on._"

"_Was Ellone…?_"

"…_No. She wasn't there."_ I said, strangely not caring that I was headed down that slippery slope and overtly telling him lies now. At this point, I just hoped that it would be enough to ensure that his mind wouldn't go down that track.

He looked away for a good second before his eyes met up with mine once more with a somber gaze. "…Whatever I'd said about you helping me find Ellone…just forget about it."

My heart did a somersault. Did I not think things through again with my words? I wouldn't have been surprised if I did overlook a possible interpretation of my wording. Right then, I wanted nothing more than to curl up into a ball and forget the world but…maybe there was the slight possibility of me jumping the gun here.

"…Why?"

Just maybe.

"Because a person's dead already and I doubt the body count will stay the same if you continue nosing around in places we shouldn't be." he coldly stated. A rogue tear or two escaped asylum. He believed me. And whether or not he thought that this was all linked, he…actually believed me. And I…I suddenly felt horrible over the lie rubbing salt in his wounds rather than protecting them. "You were right – without a logical escape plan, finding her means nothing. The plan was dead in the water from the moment I brought it up. I was delusional to think otherwise."

"No. You weren't." I softly said.

"Then _what_ was I?"

"-Someone who was afraid of losing someone who means a lot to them." I answered. "It's normal to cling to hope. _You're _normal."

"Well, normal won't cut it here. Normal won't make plans miraculously work." he acidly spat. His blue eyes darkened into a shade reminiscent of onyx again as an equally-dark expression flitted across his face.

If this conversation would have occurred at any other time, in any other context, I would have told him not to give up hope, to keep trying but…in my current state, I knew his pain all too well, I also knew that what he'd said was all too true. He'd reached his much-put off breaking point, resigned to the fact he'd never see her again. Even so, something…felt off. Despite how dour he'd been around me, I'd always pictured him being like a fighter underneath all the doom and gloom. Someone who'd give up everything for a cause, even if he had to go against what his pessimistic view on the world was telling him.

Even though it's what I wanted, I still wished it hadn't happened like this but…I knew he'd be stuck between a rock and a hard place; there was just no way he'd be able to save her and get out here alive short of a miracle. He might think of her every day and constantly remind himself of the failures but, he was young and he still had a perfectly-good shot at building a new life. Still…that didn't make this hardship any less easy. I knew that more than anyone else.

In spite of myself, I just did what came natural to me – I got off the bed, leaned over slightly and wrapped my arms around him in a standing hug. Naturally, he tensed but… didn't fight me off, surprisingly enough. He didn't wrap his arms around me either but he didn't say anything about being discomfited either. If anything, I figured that he'd taken this moment to allow his brain to slowly accept what was happening – the Ellone aspect of it, I mean.

When the hug ran its course, I stepped back and noticed that his eyes were back to their normal colour and his hair was slowly getting back to brown again when he looked up at me. I bit my lip, bracing for another round of emotions crashing over me like waves.

I wondered if I'd overstepped my boundaries with that hug just as much as I worried about what was going on with him.

What exactly was the trigger for these changes? Or was it some randomly-occurring symptom with CET?

With Allison gone, the vaguest chance at having my questions answered was effectively reduced to zero.

That realization stung like a bandage being ripped off of a still-fresh gash. And I didn't have any topical analgesic solution to douse the fire.

Not that it would have helped anyway. This was like cutting open old wounds. There was no consolation in the fact that I'd still only have one scar in the end instead of two – it wouldn't make me forget how much it hurt going over something I'd once healed all over again.


	15. Chapter XIV – His First Time

**Author's Notes – **Gotta leave this unbeta'd for now because it's so late and I have to post now or else it'd be delayed for two days. Will look it over later.

_-—-_

_Chapter XIV – His First Time_

Not long after the hug, I heard a faint but unsettling noise. I would have been thankful for the distraction from my thoughts and the tinges of awkwardness brewing post-hug but…

"…_Mrrh…_"

My heart skipped a beat but I tried to keep calm as I tried to do some math in my head.

"…What was that?" Squall asked. I raised my index finger to silence him as I tilted my head in a way so that my ear was slightly closer to the divider curtain.

"_**Ragghh!**_**"**

I winced at the sound of the sharp growl. Some things you just never get used to no matter how many times it happens.

Naturally, I couldn't avoid or ignore the look on Squall's face. His blue eyes narrowed and his expression tensed some.

"_-Has she…?_"

I nodded, not offering any further explanation though he was now obviously looking to me for guidance.

The truth was that my brain was still trying to process the best way of telling him how to proceed since…well, I couldn't quite remember with certainty whether or not they'd tethered sleeping beauties 1 & 2 who'd come here about a week prior to Ellone's bed-successor. I normally kept some kind of notes on who was admitted here when and put a checkmark beside their name if I noticed they were tethered for my own peace of mind but…I must have forgotten this time given how pre-occupied I was these past few days.

Taking a breath to steady my nerves a little, I told him in a voice no louder than a whisper, "_I don't remember if she was tethered so we might have to prepare for the worst here._"

He nodded.

"_When they first turn, it takes them a couple of minutes to adjust to the intense imagined pain from brain degeneration. After that, if they can smell, see or otherwise sense that an unaffected human's around, they will go after them – it doesn't matter to them if you're twice their size with enough muscles to lift a transport truck – they __**will**__ try to kill you."_

"_Risk of infection?" _he asked in an equally-hushed tone.

"_Yes - if any bodily fluid enters an open wound and gets into your bloodstream, it's game over. You'll turn._"

Two sections of curtain reached for my head and I frantically pushed the arms coming from the other side away from me. My heart was beating wildly, my head full of flashbacks and a combination of ice and lead lined my guts – the shove wasn't enough to hear any noises of the adjacent bed's springs so I knew that I hadn't toppled the zombified girl over so she'd fall backwards onto her mattress to buy us time. Now it would be a matter of seconds before she'd come barreling in where we were – either through the curtain again or where the two sections opened – and there were no useful objects to defend ourselves within reach since I doubted the ability to dish out paper cuts counted for much here.

But the moment never came as an eerie near-silence swept over us – we could still hear some laboured breathing after the initial growls in response to the shove but…nothing else. I chanced a glance to Squall – he didn't look beside himself or anything like that but…I could tell he had some ice and lead weighing him down too. He knew as much as I did that this was likely to be the calm before the storm and at any second, all hell would break loose.

But still…in my own experiences, zombies were pretty much as ruthless and suicidally-determined as honey badgers were. They didn't just stop to lick their wounds when their meal source fought back. No, whether it was a scratch or an entire arm hacked off, they still kept at it until they were knocked out by sedatives or there was a bullet lodged between their eyes.

Then I heard the laboured breathing intensify, punctuated by a sickening crunch and shrill _human _scream. All my questions went away and I found myself instinctively ushering Squall to the other side of the bed in an effort to put as much space between us and the newly-turned. Crouching down and motioning for Squall to do so to attempt to remain out of sight and hopefully out of mind, the wails kept coming at a deafening volume. I wished that I could have done something to help but I already knew it was too late for that one hapless girl and that waiting it out until the doctors would surely come rushing in was our best chance of survival.

Looking over at Squall who was on my left, I near-silently mouthed, "_…There's nothing we can do but wait it out. The doctors will take care of this soon._"

He nodded back and I said no more after that, knowing that we needed to be able to pay attention to any aural cues that would let us know if she was approaching us. The thing was though…was that I couldn't quite shake this semi-stupor I was in – I was drained in so many ways emotionally, the adrenaline in my system wasn't able to fully counteract the effect.

All I could think about was Allison, how Squall must have been at his wits' end being bombarded with what I'd told him and this…my thoughts were so all over the place and fragmented and the way Squall was looking at me periodically without bothering to be discreet about it – though it was kind of impossible to bother given that we were in such a confined space – wasn't helping matters any.

The screaming died down, forcing me to lasso my scatter-brains into a proper concentrated thinking unit. And quickly.

Then there was more screaming.

Our zombie friend had moved onto her next hapless victim and if she had been a picky eater, it wouldn't be too long before our odds would plummet even further and we'd be up against a small contingent of the undead instead of dealing with the stench of the permanently-dead. I remained as still as ever but it was hard not to consider the possibilities when I knew that the second victim was the bed straight across from mine and not across the room by the door. I looked at Squall and…in that fleeting second of uninterrupted eye contact, I somehow suspected that he wasn't going to stand, or crouch in this case, by my side for much longer.

"_Stay._" I told him firmly in a tone not too unlike the one I'd reserved for Angelo years ago when she threatened to bolt towards the nearest squirrel that caught her beady little eyes.

And much like my dear dog, he didn't listen. He got up in spite of my words and pulled off my bed sheets entirely before cautiously exiting through the slit of the curtain opening. Not even a moment after I'd seen his figure pass through the material divide, the screaming stopped and guttural growling replaced it. I had not heard a single grunt, groan or yell from Squall but it didn't calm my nerves any.

The second I heard a rather loud clattering noise, peppered with a few gasps and squeals, I bolted from my crouching position and ran through the curtains' gap without a single thought other than the ones that were constantly hoping and praying that Squall was ok.

The sight before me froze me in my tracks.

The second girl was unharmed, though scared, standing up on top of the bed's mattress by the headboard, beginning to crouch back down and Squall…

-He was kneeling on the floor with one foot digging into zombie-girl's back to pin her down, her arms and head entirely trapped inside the sheets he'd stolen from me. Slowly but surely, the frequency of the flailing and gasps lessened and stillness took hold.

It was at that moment when Squall looked at me, looking like a man burdened by relief.

"The second girl's fine but the first is bleeding out." he quietly informed me. "Please, find some doctors."

I nodded, feeling somewhat beside myself as I began to turn around and speed-walk out of the room. I'd made the mistake of catching the sight of the first victim out of the corner of my eye. It wasn't because of the amount of blood present, no, it was because she looked like she was still struggling to hang on despite the fact that everything she had to have been taught would have told her that it was a pointless endeavor.

The hope she still held out for despite everything made me want to cry.

I personally hoped that she'd fall into a peaceful eternal sleep brought on by exsanguination instead of the doctors needing to do the job for her so she'd die without having lost hope in her final breaths on this planet.

As luck would have it, this ended up being the case. But it didn't make matters any easier to come to terms with, even though I was no stranger to this scenario.

Two people had died because of this horrible affection, one by design and the other by misfortune. Both would have families that would never see them again, never get to hear them laugh, sing or speak either. They'd become nothing more than memories in the hearts of the people who loved them.

Then there was the three of us who'd witnessed the event.

I doubted we'd ever forget either.

-—-

After everything was said and done, after phone calls were made and the messes cleaned up, Squall, myself and Kari – the luckily not-undead girl – found ourselves in room 2R along with another guy who was earlier in transition and out cold. As luck wouldn't have it, a good 40 percent of people currently at the hospital transitioned today, 70 percent of which zombified though, all save for Clara – the then-resident zombie of room 1R – had been properly tethered.

Though she'd come here roughly the same time as Clara, Kari wasn't tethered to her bed in our new room. She'd written to us not to worry because her natural hair colour was black but her eyes were a light brown. She'd written to us on a pad of paper instead of telling us because she'd gone deaf in her sleep the night prior.

When I'd thought about it, it made sense that she hadn't screamed until the zombified Clara was within sight. I'd assumed it was because she was asleep like she always had been throughout most of her transition but…yeah, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there was no way she wouldn't have been still asleep after the other girl was being mauled.

Sitting on the foot of my new bed with my feet dangling over the right side, I couldn't help but think about what that had to been like for her. Go to sleep, not knowing that the ambient sounds would be the last thing you'd ever hear, only to wake up with your world muted and something no longer human trying to take everything else.

Then I couldn't help but look towards the bed to the right of mine.

He might not have turned deaf but he'd been certainly acting mute ever since we were moved since we'd been moved into this room.

After making a feeble attempt to stop biting my bottom lip, I attempted to say something. "…You holding up ok?"

"…I'm fine." he half-mumbled, not even bothering to look my way.

The feeble attempt I'd made petered out and a frown reappeared on my face. "You don't sound fine."

He finally looked at me, the coldness of his blue irises freezing me in place. "I just killed someone. Who the hell would feel fine after that?"

"Ok, so maybe that was a dumb question." I conceded. "I know that saying this again probably won't make you feel any better but…you did what had to be done. There was nothing else we could do for her."

He said nothing.

It was an impervious look telling me that my words weren't exactly sinking in his head and that I should shut up and stop trying, but I didn't care. I took it as a cue to continue until it got through to him and so I deliberately plopped myself onto his bed to make sure I did just that. If he moved from the opposite end of the bed where he was sitting, I wouldn't care. I'd just follow him wherever he'd go.

"The first time anyone sees anyone turn in front of them is scary enough as it is, even if they're restrained and there's no danger. What you did was nothing short of amazing and incredible – I'm not kidding when I say it's still boggling my mind. Not everyone can just rein in their fear enough to not just be able to run away, but to make sure that everyone who wasn't already too far gone would be safe, even if it meant putting yourself in harm's way."

His shields lessened but they had not lowered completely. The less-frosty expression suggested he was listening but reluctant to let my words sink in.

Then I went for the one-two punch, moving as close as I could without sitting on any of his limbs and leaning my head forward to close the gap as best I could.

"_Most important of all, you ended that girl's suffering._" I whispered to him. He was stock-still and eying me intently, but since he wasn't making a mad dash out of the room, I continued. "_You saved her from the torment some of those other turned people are going throu-ow._"

I turned around, only to see the offending object that hit me in the back of the head…a paper airplane? Naturally, I then tried to figure out who the would-be pilot was only to see the one guy still passed out and the other more-likely culprit was nowhere to be seen.

Crafty, crafty girl.

Looking back down at the folded piece of paper, I noticed a few word creeping out of the centerfolds of the darn thing so I grabbed it and started to unfold the thing in front of Squall.

_If you're going to make out with him while I'm around, at least draw the curtains everyone doesn't get a free peep show. Think of the children, why don't you?_

I did a double-take. This chicken scratch wasn't-

Ow. The second plane hurt just as much as the first.

I turned around again, only to have the pieces fall into place.

"Hey guys," he waved, "Got called in to help deal with the minor zombie apocalypse – aren't you glad to see this handsome mug again so soon?"

I narrowed my eyes. "You ass." I mock-hissed. "You almost made me blame a deaf girl for these paper airplanes hitting me in the head. Total mood-killer."

I don't know how I have known this because I wasn't looking at him, but I pretty much felt Squall's face burning up badly as Zell laughed.

"Really?" he said rather incredulously, "Man, my stealth techniques keep on getting better and better. And uh…you ok, Squall? Your face's giving a tomato a run for its money. Well, if tomatoes actually carried Gil like monsters in video games do but…aah, you know what I meant."

"Fine," was Squall's monosyllabic, stony reply.

"So…you're not burnin' up with some kind of intense fever or something?" Zell added with a wry grin, "Cause that's happened to people out of the blue sometimes."

"…I wish I was because this fucking ludicrous scene in front of me would have made more sense if I was just hallucinating." he acerbically retorted. "But in case if you forgot, several people died today. It's not the time for stupid jokes."

Before any more misunderstandings or heated words broke out, I found myself turning back to face Squall again. "He knows that." I told him. "He's probably the one who understands that the most, believe it or not. To put it in Zell's words, he jokes because-"

"_-'If you can't laugh or smile at the small things anymore, then the world gets a little sadder than it already is.'_" he finished for me, walking a little closer to us. "It's probably hard to believe but, I'm not trying to be insensitive. I just joke to keep things light because everything involved with this process is anything but. Gotta admit that today's even been testing me though."

When he slumped down into the chair to the right of Squall's bed and suddenly sighed with his head bowed and his thumbs massaging his eyelids, my heart skipped a couple of beats. "…Zell? You ok?"

"…Yeah, I'm fine. Just tired." he answered, moving his hands away from his face. "Tired of all the bullshit too."

My ears perked up at all of this. Zell…really wasn't the type to complain like that so candidly and not in a jokey, _'livin' the dream'_ kind of way – normally you had to pry it out of him before he'd say anything.

"I know I'm going to sound like captain obvious here but…something happen?"

"Yeah. I found out about something that relates to our friend."

I looked at him skeptically. "Ok, I know we don't have many mutual friends but you kinda need to be a little more specific here. …Is it the friend who left me a note?"

"No. I meant _him._"


	16. Chapter XV – Seeing Stars

**Author's Notes –** I think this may actually be the only time I've ever had a Rinoa day update. If not, then it's been a long while at the least. Cheers!

_-—-_

_Chapter XV – Seeing Stars_

Squall and I exchanged looks for a moment before I uttered, "…Oh."

"What was said?" Squall asked, cutting straight to the chase whereas I hadn't. Zell ruffled his hair a bit more.

"They're pretty much covering their own asses for that tether screw-up."

"Even I could have told you that." Squall shot back. It didn't take a rocket surgeon to realize that Squall just was not having it with anything Zell had to say today. It was more obvious than the fact that I'd meant to use the word scientist and somehow thought that rockets needed surgeries apparently.

Yeah, I guess it had to be really obvious to overshadow my glaring inability to think of the proper expressions in my head.

"Lay off, will you? Geez. I've just officially spent half my day here, cut me some slack." he shot back. "Besides, that's not it. They're apparently planning to move you in a semi-private room. You too."

I blinked. "So we're being moved to two semi-private rooms? That's kind of a waste. I don't see the point." I commented. Then Zell shook his head.

"No, I meant that they're moving you two to the same room."

"Um, _what?_" I stammered. This made even less sense than having us in two rooms. Leaning slightly forward, I whispered to Zell, _"...If they want to keep tabs on me because of the Nurse Bear thing, why would they put me with Squall? Wouldn't it make more sense to separate me from him since I only really talk to him and you?"_

"My guess is that the old locking mechanisms are still on those things if they wanna use them, kill two chocobos with one stone and all that jazz." Zell shrugged. "I mean, other than that, the only other guess I can think of is that it's a reverse psychology kind of thing. You know, you get what you want and then you start thinking, 'what's the catch?' and you start being all paranoid for that reason. Well, assuming that you actually _want_ to be Mr. Sociable's roommate."

Naturally, this off-hand comment led to Squall glaring at Zell, Zell grinning at me and me keeping an eye on Squall to make sure he didn't sock Zell or something. Never mind the whole three way stare love triangle thing, this was a full-on Estharian stare stand-off. Well, despite all this random non-sense, at least I could be thankful that Zell didn't go on a tangent along the lines of 'being surprised they'd leave us to our own devices,' with full-on 'wink, wink, nudge, nudge'-type connotations.

…Ugh, it's official. I have spent way too much time around the guy - thinking in potential innuendos that weren't actually said to me was the last straw. Especially when he was the one who actually suggested that we should stick together in the first place.

"Zell, be nice." I tiredly told him as I shot him a look, desperate to regain some semblance of order again. "I know this goes against what I'd said earlier because I was defending your reasons to joke but…I'd appreciate it if you stopped baiting him. He's been through a lot today."

"Alright, alright. I'll stop." he conceded, massaging his neck a little as he let out a sigh. "Man…today just flat-out sucks. Not because of the whole telling me to stop joking thing, just…everything else. I haven't even thought of a damn way to spring either of you out of here without raising a million red flags."

"It's ok Zell." I reassured. "Neither of us was expecting instant results or anything like that. Especially not when you were so busy this evening."

"It doesn't matter Rin." he stated. "If anything happens while I'm not around, I'm going to feel guilty as hell for not doing something about it. Hell, I feel guilty now because you were almost as good as dead tonight if it wasn't for Squall's quick thinking."

I bit back a frown. "You can't be everywhere Zell. It was an accident, nothing more. Don't beat yourself up."

"…Can you even be sure of that?" Squall interjected. I looked back at him.

Before I could fit in a word, Zell jolted upright in his seat and asked, "Wait…did you tell him about…?"

"I had to, Zell." I told him. "He deserved to know what kind of mess was going on after that conversation basically dangled the subject over his head like a carrot on a stick."

Understandably so, Zell still looked a little uneasy. "You'd better not start snooping around man." he told him. "I mean it."

"Wasn't planning to." Squall curtly answered. "She knows that too."

"_Good._" Zell answered in a sharp tone that was rather un-Zell-like. "You _have_ to be my eyes when I'm not there."

It wasn't the first time he'd expressed his guilt over his inability to be there to keep us, well…mostly me if I wanted to be frank, safe but…something hit me then that didn't register as deeply before. I couldn't put my finger on why that was but, if Zell hadn't been shooed away by a nurse to ask us a few questions in private about the earlier incident with Clara, I had a feeling that he would have stayed in that chair into the late hours of the night or when someone else would have told him to go home, whichever came first.

And there was something just so intrinsically sweet and unnerving about that at the same time.

-—-

Without much ceremony, Squall and I were moved to a semi-private room together as Zell had said we would not long after the brief questioning and offers of sedatives to calm our collective nerves – which we'd both politely declined – without much explanation as to why other than it 'being easier' for the staff, especially since we were 'special' cases.

Squall, I could definitely see why he'd be classified as special to make the lame attempt of an excuse somewhat passable, but me? The only thing special about me was that I had the uncanny knack for making most people run in the opposite direction by simply opening my mouth. And I was pretty sure that was not the kind of special that required me to be cooped up in semi-private rooms for. Well, if this was an insane asylum maybe that would make this a different story but…as much as this place wore at your psyche, an insane asylum this was not.

While my thoughts were running around as frantically as a chocobo with its head cut off, enough so to practically guarantee that the anxiousness would deny me of sleep despite the fact that my body was so physically exhausted that the pillows were calling my name, Squall looked like he was lost in his own world in the bed facing mine, his eyes fixated on a patch of wall above my head.

Although I assumed this was the case simply because he didn't have anything better to look at, it still bothered me. Things were way too still and it was the kind of kindling my mind so sorely did not need to stoke the fires that would inevitably burn everything down and consume me if I didn't extinguish them now.

"What's the non-birthday number in your tattoo stand for?"

My question dragged his sights downward. "…Why are you asking that?"

"No real reason." I told him. "Just curious."

He sighed, sitting up a little straighter against his headboard. "Let me rephrase that – what _prompted _you to ask?"

I tilted my head a little. "…Curiosity?" Naturally, that earned me a look so I cut the crap. Or, well…made it seem like I was. "Squall, you do realize that you're asking _me_ to describe my thought processes here, right? In all honesty, I'm pretty sure that explaining quantum physics would be a cakewalk compared to that. You don't have to answer if it's too personal or just don't want to period. I was just curious because you never did answer me before is all."

The look eased up and he was rubbing the inner corners of his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "I don't really care, it's just your timing…it's weird as hell. No offense."

I was shocked but tried to keep it cool. Holy. "None taken."

He hadn't even fully moved his fingers away from his eyelids before he started to explain. "It's my case number."

I leaned a little forward. "Case number as in…?"

"-The one assigned to me by child services, or whatever you call it." he curtly explained.

"Oh." Some colour left my face. I suddenly felt bad for asking. "I'm sorry."

He waved me off. "…It's not that big a deal."

"It's still really personal." I said. "I feel bad for prying."

"It's not prying if I told you voluntarily." he pointed out. "I wouldn't have tattooed in a visible spot if I didn't want to be asked about it."

"It's not that visible if you think about it." I countered, feeling the need to play devil's advocate for some reason. "I mean, if you weren't wearing that gown, that tattoo wouldn't have been visible unless if you were swimming or just shirtless for some reason. I think people would be too busy to bother asking you questions then."

And then without even saying a word, an embarrassing thought crossed my tired mind. My face regained all its colour and then some.

"_Aah,_ I meant that everyone wouldn't bother because you'd all be in public. Doing your own things and minding your own business."

If the zombies didn't get me soon, I'm pretty sure I was gonna crawl in a hole to die anyway. Damn sure, actually.

"…I got that the first time. Not sure why that required further clarification." he dryly said. "Though it did draw attention to that stretch of an innuendo I didn't catch until then."

It was time to start digging a hole, it seemed.

"…You couldn't have just let that one slide, couldn't you?"

"No. Not really."

It might have been wrong in the circumstances but, since I was tired and beyond caring at this point, I snuck in a couple of small snickers. "Ok. So maybe it was a stretch but…I didn't want to accidentally offend you." I said. After the last of the giggles left my system, we fell into a strangely-comfortable silence for a good moment. "In all honesty, I think my mind leapt to that possibility because it's happened to me."

His eyebrows furrowed a little. "…So you were accidentally offended by a stretch of an innuendo?"

"Not offended. Just…my logic was brought to question then the conversation somehow devolved into a bunch of super-obvious innuendos being tossed around from there. Well, this was Selphie I was talking to then so I guess it was kinda expected." I said. Just by looking at his face after I was done talking, I could tell that this explanation did not seem to do any kind of, well, explaining. So I lifted my shirt.

I can't lie, it was infinitely amusing to see him still so utterly confused until he finally saw what I wanted him to see…which was not my bra but the thing right below it on the right side.

Yeah…now that I thought about it, I probably should have told him instead of just lifting up my shirt and make him wonder if I was going to flash him for a split second there. For someone who clearly did not have any boobs of his own and have seen grow a bit of facial hair at one point, along with having an Adam's apple and deep (and also perma-bored) voice, I really had little grounds to mistake him for a woman. Well, I could have mistaken him for a robot at times but that was totally not the point.

"Had a fake ID to get these stars when I was 18." I told him, deliberately taking a brief moment for myself to look down at my set of four small stars starting from just below the band of my bra on the right side and spaced out so the last one hit midway between my hip bone and the bottom of my ribs. They've been there for so long that I often forgot that I had them. Then again, they weren't very big and the thin black outlines weren't coloured in, only the top two of them had very minimal colour accents – not to mention being here didn't allow for much privacy, nor was there ever really any reason to check yourself out in bathroom mirrors anyway since everyone was so preoccupied with themselves – so it wasn't too farfetched an idea to forget.

With a smile, I told him, "Argued with the artist about the location since it was a first tattoo and most of them were placed over my ribs. Definitely an argument I wish I had lost then but I don't regret the pain now." As I lowered my shirt, a chuckle escaped at the memory of showing Selphie. "The ones that have colour accents represent different people. The first one with warm blue accents is for myself, the second with cherry-red ones is for my mother and the last two don't have any because I haven't been to a tattoo shop since that first sitting. The plan was to ask the two people I had in mind what colour they wanted to represent themselves but the idea kinda went to hell because I had it done right before…well, coming here.

"I know that whenever I get out of here and earn some money, the next one's gonna have chocobo-yellow accents for Selphie. But anyway, getting back to the point, and I swear there is one, is that when I showed her to ask what colour she wanted, the first thing out of her mouth other than 'OH MY GOD' was that my father was _so_ going to kill me. Then I made the mistake of saying that it wasn't like he ever came with me to the beach when I'd be wearing a bikini or like I was going to strut around topless around him. She then countered my point with the fact that it wouldn't stop people from taking pictures and uploading them to social sites. Obviously, she meant people taking pictures of me in a bikini but because I'd said that other thing, well, it…pretty much went downhill from there. If it wasn't just the two of us then, I would have been absolutely mortified by the things that came out of her mouth."

"…Not sure why I needed to know that but whatever," Squall dryly replied.

"It's vital information." I tried joking. "You're just not aware of its vital-ness yet."

"I'm… not responding to that. Going to bed."

When he did just that and shut the lights because he was the one closest to the switches near the door, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. I knew he was probably thinking a lot about what had happened and everything, probably not in a mood to joke around whatsoever but…it didn't change how horrible it was to be alone with my thoughts again. It sucked that he clearly dealt with the demons in an opposite way that I did.

With nothing to do but think or sleep, I tried my hand at the latter despite damn well knowing how fruitless it was going to be.

Well, at least I didn't have anywhere to be tomorrow.

-—-

When the rays of light shown from behind me, engulfing my still-closed eyelids in nothing but light, I wanted to shoot whatever genius forgot to close the curtains last night. I always had a hard enough time sleeping as it was and once the sunlight shone through the windows or the lights came on in the room, I was as good as done for the day – I was definitely not one of those people who could sleep through anything or at any time. I needed complete darkness and complete silence here.

Still, I wasn't ready to quite throw in the towel and figure out what godawful time of morning I'd woken up at yet. In a last ditch attempt to sleep for a little longer, I dragged my sorry butt out of bed and moved the curtains myself. Turning around, I indulged a bit of curiosity and looked to see if Squall was still asleep or if he was just as much as a light sleeper as I was.

When the lump across the room looked like it was made up of just crumpled up blankets and a bit of pillow instead of a cocooned human being, I looked across the room to my left to see if the bathroom was currently being used. While the door was closed, no light was shining from under the slight gap between the door and the tile floor. Tamping down my nerves, I walked over to the said door and knocked, calling out his name.

No answer.

I slowly turned the knob only to find it not only unlocked but to open it with no one screaming obscenities at me to shut it back again.

Letting the cold steel knob go, I walked over to the other door in the room, wondering if he'd just taken a walk somewhere else as I was walking.

The only problem was that once I reached the handle, I couldn't even get the door to budge an inch.


	17. Chapter XVI – Speaking Your Mind

_Chapter XVI – Speaking Your Mind_

The very moment that I realized that the door wasn't moving an inch, my mind shifted into panic mode.

It was happening…it was really happening and Squall wasn't anywhere to be seen and god, as much as my life sucked, I didn't want it to be over. As thoughts were frantically spinning around, I tried pulling the handle, tried jiggling it more, tried leveraging my weight with a foot on the frame. Still nothing.

I turned so fast that I almost gave myself whiplash. I could feel a cold sweat starting to make my t-shirt cling to every curve and contour of my body. There had to be something in this room to pry the door open or at least help me defend myself. After a quick once over around the room with my eyes, I found nothing remotely sharp in my sights. And unless if my plan was to have a pillow fight with whoever would come inside or attempt to pull Squall's trick from yesterday – and let's face the obvious here, they were terrible options because I am not physically-strong enough to turn linen and encased fluff into weapons of mass destruction – everything was pointing to an obvious conclusion.

I'd have to barricade the door and try to hide in the bathroom. Maybe if I was lucky, there would be some bleach or other kind of chemical cleaner in there that I could defend myself with.

In other words, I'm pretty much screwed.

A lock was unclicking and I turned around again. There was no time for a hypothetical bleach bottle, let alone any time to even grab a very non-hypothetical pillow. I froze in spite of every want and wish to stay alive. It was like my body was readying itself to face the music my mind wanted to mute out.

The door was opening ever so slowly and I was holding my breath, almost ready to pass out. But when I saw a shock of familiar unruly brown hair, the air I was holding in was knocked out of me just as fast.

"…_Squall?_" I choked out in utter confusion.

And just like that, the door started closing again.

I raced to reach the handle before the door could be closed on me again. After squeaking through the door, I noticed that I couldn't see him anywhere so it meant that he'd already went around the bend since we had the semi-private room closest to the west wing's double doors. Why was he trying to avoid me? More importantly, what was he trying to hide? If I didn't know any better, it was as if he had wanted to come through the door as quietly as he could which meant that he was trying to make it look like he'd never left.

And that was a possibility that sent chills down my spine because it wasn't likely that he was sneaking out for anything trivial or good, period.

Breaking into a light jog, I rounded the bend and went around the floor until I got by the elevators. Naturally, all of the said elevators had been going up so I figured he'd taken the stairs. After pushing the door to the stairs open, I took a second to listen for any sounds telling me if anyone was going up or down them. It took even less than that to notice that he was going down because, again, I could recognize that mop of his anywhere.

Right then, I started stair hopping like a madwoman, not even bothering to dramatically call out his name. The speed he was going down the stairs was telling me that he was damn-well trying to avoid me and wasting time with clichéd yelling wasn't gonna help me catch him. And strangely enough, for a guy going through transition, he was giving me a run for my money so I needed every unwasted moment I could metaphorically get my grubby hands on.

Getting to the bottom of the stairs and practically flying past the door dividing the staircase and the first floor, I was kinda miffed that he was still managing to be out of sight but then I'd noticed a flash of tattooed skin. Namely, I could see through the window pane of one of the double doors leading to the center courtyard directly across from this alcove full of elevators; I had to resist the urge to say gotcha very loudly.

He probably didn't even know that only this side of the doors was open during the wintertime for the smokers so if he'd been looking to cut through the courtyard to lose me, he had another thing coming.

But the moment never came – he was able to pass through the other set of doors and…I wanted to facepalm. I keep on forgetting it's almost late-March and they typically have the other set of doors unlocked around my birthday. Not that it mattered, the doors being open only delayed the inevitable because it was a big circuit like every other floor. Not to mention, no one at the reception desk was going to let someone in pajama pants and a gown just waltz out of here so his only choices were between heading left and eventually hitting up the cafeteria and gift shop area or turning right and ending up in the waiting room and registration area.

I decided to take a chance by waiting by the alcove I was currently standing in, figuring he'd have to come by sometime. And so I parked my butt on the benches lining the back wall on either side of the stairwell door. With my elbows on my knees and my entire upper body hunched over in a reflective position, I waited.

And as the minutes ticked by, occupied my time by people watching. But since it was only random staff flitting by to get on and off of the elevators - as visiting hours were eons away, meaning no visitors to be heard of yet - I quickly realized how little entertainment there was to be found when everyone basically looked the same - it was definitely a pale imitation of the real thing for sure. Even still, I tried my best to commit myself to unearthing whatever distraction there was to be found in it - even the same-st of people had peculiar things one could pick up on, even if it was on a group-wide basis as a whole. I noticed that most looked haggard due to the time of day but there was the occasional nurse or doctor with a bit of pep in their step though none of them took the stairs. A lot of people stole looks at me when they thought I wasn't looking and I wondered what it was that they saw. Well, I didn't really want to wonder because then it would require me to guess about how much my expression was giving away about everything that had happened today – a thought I didn't want to entertain whatsoever. My clothes were still sticking to me in places and the ants in my pants were getting harder to ignore the longer I sat on this section of bench so I just left. The distraction-factor was all tapped out here.

As fate would have it, Squall and I collided the moment I made a sharp left turn. Neither of us fell down but we were pretty much as good as frozen for a good hard second as soon as it happened. He tried to dart around me the moment he regained his sense but I wasn't going to let him go that easily; I sidestepped to block his path.

"…_You're not leaving this easy._" I muttered. "_You owe me an explanation._"

He tried sidestepping the other way to no avail as I blocked his path – I saw that one from a mile away. "…I mean it Squall." I told him sternly.

"I don't owe you anything." he shot back, using one of his hands to physically push me to the side.

"Something happened, I know it did because you're acting super weird." I continued, still following him. "And if you keep on ignoring me I'll…I'll tackle you!"

He opened the door to the stairwell and I…well…

"…_Goddammit Rinoa,_" he wheezed from the floor, gasping for air in spurts, "_…what_…the hell is wrong…_with you?_"

…And I was on top of him, perfectly unfazed with his body cushioning the impact with the floor. With a muted click behind us signifying that the door was indeed closed and that we were officially alone in a stairwell.

"Speak for yourself, Squall," I shot back, though I lacked the conviction to make my words have a decent amount of bite – to my ears, they came across as sad. Maybe it was for the better. "I just had to tackle you so I could get _you_ to stand still and stop running away. What the hell is wrong with _you?_"

I got off of him and calmly took a seat on the second step to lean forward and look him in the eyes. "Never mind the fear and paranoia I experienced when I was locked inside that room and thought I was gonna die, you are scaring me even more right now." I whisper-shouted. "Please…tell me what happened."

He looked at me for a moment, the glower on his face intensifying as he wiped the blood from his lip. "Fine, you want to know? She's as good as fucking dead."

His words felt like acid spat in my face – I had to recoil. "Ellone? You went to see Ellone?" My brain short-circuited. _'Are you SERIOUS? You promised you wouldn't snoop. You PROMISED.'_

"I promised you nothing. I only asked you to not look. There is a difference." he snapped back, getting off the floor to be at full height like he was gonna scare me into backing down. But two could place that game so I stood up on my step to keep things even. Oooh, I was so angry.

'_Oh no, there is __**so**__ a difference you selfish jerk,'_ I fumed – I wouldn't have been surprised if there was steam coming from my ears because the thought was just boiling in my head as if it was a kettle, "You told Zell and I that _you _wouldn't look. Or did you forget about that? Ugh, never mind about the semantics, I can't believe you took that big of a risk after everything that happened to you yesterday. You just put yourself in danger again."

"The nurse conducting that interview slipped me the note, telling me where she was. It wasn't that calculated a risk."

'_Did someone replace your brains with strawberry smoothie juice? Because it's damn well starting to sound like a logical reason to explain how incredibly-stupid you're acting.'_ I wanted to say. "But it's still a risk Squall. In case you forgot the whole, _'me telling you about the things they're doing'_ thing, it could have been a trap to pick you off."

'_Yes, my brains are now 100% smoothie. I really don't give a fuck about your childish insults at this point, Rinoa. Not when I failed at even saying goodbye to Elle.'_

I blinked. I blinked hard.

As he was about to turn and leave, I leapt off the steps and grabbed him by the wrist.

"-What?" he groused, the sheen in his eyes undeniable despite the concrete walls he tried to keep intact.

"When I said the smoothie for brains thing…I didn't actually say it. I _thought_ it." I said. _'And I'm pretty sure you didn't say that last thing about childish insults out loud either.'_

I've never met anyone look so beside themselves like Squall did in that moment.

He broke out of the weak grip I had on his wrist. "-What the hell are you?"

"A normal 22-year old girl who is just as freaked out about this as you are," I frankly answered before whispering, _"…Now will you keep your voice down? People might think I turned into a zombie or something."_

'…_Fine. But is there a better place to talk or should we just continue to think things at each other and make me question our sanity?_'

…Well, I'd say that he took the suggestion fairly well.

-—-

We'd ended back up to the activities room on the second floor after a rather tense and silent walk up the stairs. Squall had kept his distance and hadn't the crowded thoughts in my own head been all vying for attention simultaneously, I might have been a little offended by that. But, truthfully, I was probably entertaining a lot of the same thoughts and questions. I hadn't heard any of his thoughts in my head so that was a good sign, I guess.

Closing the door and the two blinds of the perma-empty activities-slash-library room – I'm not kidding about that, I think I see a fine layer of dust on the things that my butt hasn't sat on or my fingers haven't touched – I sat myself in the usual beat-up leather chair in the far left corner and Squall took up a padded wooden chair from the table in the middle of the room and faced it in my direction. After steadying myself with a huge breath, I just went for it and broke the silence before it could even take hold in the first place.

"Ok, gonna state the obvious here and say that I think this is very very weird too." I said, finding myself fighting nerves that would not go away. "But…weirdness aside, I think it would be best to figure out the triggers that is making this happen to make sure that nobody catches us weirdly staring at each other for long periods of time and make them wonder what's going on. That means that you need to be completely honest with me and I need to be honest with you to make that deduction process go as fast as possible. We'll worry about the whole _'why is this sci-fi crap happening'_ business later."

"Fair enough." he solemnly replied. "Was the staircase the first time it happened?"

I nodded. "Yeah. You?"

He nodded back. "The first thing I heard that I wasn't entirely sure I heard you say aloud was the thing about promises. The only other thing I know for sure wasn't said out loud was the smoothie for brains comment that you had pointed out. Other than that, I couldn't tell you. I was…still preoccupied with what I found out earlier today."

I bit my lip a little. "She turned into a zombie didn't she?" Sadly, I didn't have to see him nod to know I was right. "I'm sorry Squall…I…when I stumbled upon the zombies in beds, I saw her there too but she was still human at the time. Before I could do something, I was knocked out…though, even if I hadn't been, I don't know how much help I would have been to her. I'm sorry I lied but…I didn't want to give you so much hope that it would cripple you, knowing you couldn't do anything."

"You shouldn't have played information gatekeeper with me – that was not your call to make." he plainly told me, looking me straight in the eye. _'…even if it was the most logical decision to withhold the information.'_

_'__…S_o you're giving me a guilt trip even though you think the decision was the right one too. Nice.' He then looked at me funny so I figured he heard that. Though I stopped biting my lip, I suspected that my face had turned fire-engine red. "_…_You heard that_… didn't you_?"

Reluctantly, he nodded. _'Yeah. I'm assuming you heard the other thing?'_

'_Yeah…I kinda did._' I dipped my head into my palms and just rubbed my eyes. This is so awkward and I have no idea how to block these intrusions. I really hope that I'm not going to have to think about nonsense whenever I'm around you Squall. Because as farfetched as it seems, I will eventually get tired of thinking of flying strawberry smoothies of doom and purple monkey dishwashers.

Silence.

…Ok. I hadn't been anticipating not getting a response to that period.

I looked him in the eyes once more. "Didn't you hear any of that?" I asked.

Squall looked at me funny. "If by 'that,' you meant random grunts and groans, then yes, I heard all of it."

"So…nothing about flying strawberry smoothies of doom or purple monkey dishwashers?"

"…Does it look like I'm on acid?"

"Ok…so I guess you didn't hear that." A moment later, it clicked and a shiny light bulb materialized above my head…metaphorically, that was. "Squall, I have a theory. Close your eyes for me."

Without so much as a single protest, he did as I'd asked. "…Ok."

Ok, Squall, now if you can hear me now in your thoughts, I want you to repeat the following, _'Rinoa is more awesome than the cafeteria hot dogs and smoothies combined'_ – well, not the idea of hot dogs _in_ smoothies, because that's just wrong, I meant… oh never mind.

"Squall, open your eyes." He did just that. "Did you hear anything?"

"Not unless if your mouth breathing counts."

I shot him a dirty look right before hopping off my chair and circling around his so I'd be behind him at ear-level. What about now, Squall?

When he turned around and looked at me as if I was insane with not even an inch to spare between us, I gave him the scoop.

'_Good news is that it looks like the telepathy only seems to be happening when we're looking at each other directly. Kinda makes sense given that they say that the eyes are the windows to the soul, or so the saying goes. Bad news is that if you can hear me now, it's not likely that there's an emotional trigger that we can be on the lookout for to avoid oversharing. You might want to invest in a pair of overpriced gift shop shades in the meantime until it's all figured out. Though I think there's a song about wearing them at night that says they make you keep track of visions or something so maybe that wouldn't really help either.'_

'…_For something that shouldn't be happening period, it's kind of disconcerting that you're cracking jokes about this already.' _he sent.

"In case if you haven't noticed, I crack a lot of jokes period." I replied, making a point to say it out loud. "Be thankful I'm continuing that route instead of accidentally going all TMI on you because you can hear what's between my ears."

'…_I don't see what's exactly TMI about air currents.'_

I narrowed my eyes into a patented Rinoa mega death glare (patent pending). If he hadn't been sick or seen his sister - for all intents and purposes - die today, I would have belted him one good. So good that he'd be doubled over and become putty in my hands. But instead, I let him get away with it without inflicting any bodily harm on his person. He was already as battered enough as it was. This would be like kicking a puppy.

And if I wanted to be honest, I still felt a little – ok, ok, _extremely_ – guilty about tackling him earlier.

'_Oh, blow me.' _I mentally-shot back. Yes, I might not have resorted to bodily harm, but I was secretly 12 and not above childish retorts. Especially after the smoothie for brains thing earlier.

He broke eye contract and got up from his chair. "…Not in the library."

"Real mature Squall. I didn't mean that literally."

He turned around. "At this point, I don't care. I wasn't serious either." he told me, raising a hand to rub the inside corners of his eyes. "I need to get some actual sleep. We'll figure out the rest of this later."

"Oh, ok. Sure." I stammered, taken by surprise yet again.

We had only scratched the surface insofar as these shared thoughts went. He hadn't even told me any particulars of his visit to the west wing with that nurse - well, assuming she'd actually gone with him - or why that nurse had even offered to help him out in the first place by pointing him in the right direction. There were just so many unanswered things that just thinking about them just made my head spin. It was like he was brushing me off entirely.

Was he scared about this newest turn of events? Was he angry? Confused? Sad? All of the above?

I didn't know. He wasn't facing me and even if he was, I'd bet he'd still find a way to keep his truest thoughts still locked inside.


	18. Chapter XVII – So I'll Put My Faith

_Chapter XVII – So I'll Put My Faith in Something Unknown_

After he'd basically checked out emotionally and physically, I chose to stay in the library all by myself. I didn't want to follow him like some kind of hanger-on when it was clear he wanted some privacy and maybe even legitimately wanted some sleep – I knew better than anyone else that sleep was always out of reach when you knew that someone's eyes were on you.

Besides, this was probably the only space big enough to accommodate me and all the thoughts swirling around in my head – who was I to pass up having room to breathe?

…Because honestly, if I didn't know any better, I'd think that those damn thoughts were out to suffocate me.

With what had to be the worst timing ever, I started wondering about a million different particulars that hadn't seemed to enter my mind prior to Squall leaving.

Like, was it just Squall's thoughts I could read or could I see other people's thoughts if I looked them straight in the eye?

Was this a rare transition side effect that they kept under wraps or something completely unheard of?

If that was the case, why was it that I was coincidentally able to start hearing things at the same time Squall could? As far as I knew, I wasn't transitioning. Unless…

"_We'll be moving you to this semi-private room temporarily to make it easier on the staff on hand given that you're both special cases."_

Just thinking back to that nurse's words…oh god, what if this was the specialness they were referring to? Did they know this was going to happen? What if Squall seeing Ellone was some kind of trigger to set these powers off? Or…

_Rinoa…take a deep breath. You're thinking pure non-sense and getting way ahead of yourself. _

Ok…so maybe the logic part (read: microscopic sliver) of my brain was right – there were too many variables at hand to make any sound conclusions. It could have been some kind of huge coincidence that we were placed in the same room and that the nurse handed Squall that note. Maybe it could be possible that the nurse moved us using that lame excuse to make it easier for Squall to sneak to the west wing since it was the closest room to it?

Come to think of it, that didn't seem like a half crazy hypothetical explanation. There were still some leaps and bounds to that scenario but still…the lack of crazy had to count for something.

After giving my head a shake for good measure anyway, I decided to cross off at least one of my questions by paying the cafeteria lady a visit to test out the possibility of hearing other people's thoughts with a valid excuse.

I really, really needed some coffee after this huge mess. Mush alone wouldn't cut it today and my fog of thoughts needed more room to roam. Nobody would bother me in a cafeteria at this hour and if Squall repeated his actions from a week ago, I couldn't say that I wouldn't exactly welcome that.

-—-

"Guessing you want the usual morning pick me up?" the cafeteria lady asked. Her name escaped me but I was pretty sure it started with a K.

Oh right, not the point. I needed to see if I could read her mind…which might have included thoughts such as _'Rinoa is really out of it so I'll just assume she's here for coffee,' _because A – she wasn't looking at me and B – she was pouring me coffee and sliding the cup into my in my hand already.

"It's on the house." she said, leaving me to process why for a moment. "Heard about the whole zombie thing yesterday – I'd imagine that it'd be tough to downright impossible to get a good night's sleep after that."

"Oh…! Thank you very much." I told her – it took a few blinks before it started to make sense. At least I remembered to look her in the eyes so this experiment wasn't a complete non-event. She smiled and with a slight nod and temporary smile of my own to give her, I walked away with a warm coffee cup in between my hands.

I did not and could read a single thought during those fleeting seconds. I did have a thought of my own however.

Why was only the 'zombie thing' mentioned by her? Did she not know about everything else and was there a reason for that?

Sitting down at what had to be the furthest table from the counter or any doors leading out of here, I opened the tab on the lid, letting the hot air rise from the cup and warm up my face a little – I just didn't want to think for a moment because then that would just inevitably lead to coming up with even more questions I couldn't even fathom ever getting answers for.

Since the coffee was going to be at scalding temperatures for a while, I took a moment to set the cup aside and bury my head in my folded forearms on the table to rest my eyes for a bit, also managing to muffle a fair bit of sound as well.

…Well, maybe to anyone else's ears. I was still hearing it all at full volume and I couldn't make the sniffling and tears stop. The adrenaline from yesterday's events and even this morning's was starting to wear off. I had no excuse to put it off and be strong anymore.

Everything…it felt so empty and far away. It felt like I was cut off from the world, as if I was trapped in a glass cocoon – allowed to observe everything around me but doomed to stay frozen in place.

My friend was dead because of my temper tantrum. My friend stopped living because of my temper tantrum. My friend would never talk to me again because of my temper tantrum. My friend left behind a son and husband because of my temper tantrum.

I was only alive because they thought that she was the bigger wild card.

Someone allowed Squall to see his undead sister and live to tell the tale (so far) and I couldn't even shake the sneaking suspicion that there was another motive behind it other than giving him closure.

Countless others were denied death and forced to live in agony just for the sake of finding a cure that they would probably be too far gone to even benefit from.

It made me sick to know that these researchers were playing god with no remorse whatsoever for everyone they've used, abused and…

My eyes stung so goddamn much. I wish it could stop but…every time I tried to dam the tears and steady my breathing, my body trembled until it reached that breaking point where the tiniest thought set everything off again and brought me back to square one.

I resigned myself to the fact that I'd be here until my eyes didn't have any more tears to cry and my body had no more energy to tremble, shake or even think. Maybe I could move on then and actually be able to enjoy that coffee that was surely the right temperature by now.

I honestly don't know for how long I'd spent wishing I'd be emotionally-exorcised like that as the tears continued to wrack my body. It could have been hours, it could have been minutes – I really didn't know. Time felt like it had stopped completely.

"…_You look like hell._"

I didn't need a rocket scientist (or surgeon) to know who that was.

"…_You really know how to charm a girl Leonhart._" I acidly croaked from the space to the side between my head and arms._ "Bet you got in a lot of girls' pants with that one."_

"Better than asking if you're fine when you clearly aren't."

I tilted my head up ever so slightly so could look at him directly after he took a seat across from me. "If you're just going to be a jerkface to me, go away."

He gave me a quizzical look. _'…Jerkface?'_

'_Yes, jerkface. I don't want to be around someone who…has the face of a jerk.' _I then sighed. '_Having the face of a jerk aside, what are you doing down here? I thought you wanted to sleep._'

'_Didn't end up getting to. They…moved us again – I'm back to my old room and you're somewhere at the opposite end from what I was told but they were finishing up changing the bedsheets or something. That's what I came to tell you in the first place but you were…pre-occupied.'_

I poked more of my head from out of my folded arm cocoon. "…Why?"

He shrugged. "Changed their minds again, I guess. Maybe we weren't ever supposed to be in that room together in the first place, I don't know."

'_Maybe…it was that nurse's doing?_' I sent as a suggestion, '_I mean…she did give you closure and it didn't sound like you were supposed to know about…her changing.'_

His expression turned flinty. '_Whatever. The actual reason doesn't matter. All that does is that the 'head nurse' said that it was a mistake.' _he thought; the gruff undertones to the words were hard to ignore. _'…Rinoa, I'm not good with dealing with this kind of stuff.'_

…And so was that.

"…Are you in any shape to test a theory or do you want me to leave you alone?" he asked aloud. There went all my assumptions.

"Um…honestly, it'll depend on what it is." I answered, finally taking a sip of the coffee. "My brain is not capable of any heavy lifting right now."

"That's fine. This should be simple." he answered. Then he switched to telepathy. '_Have you tried reading other people's thoughts?_'

'_Yes.'_

'_Whose?'_

'_The lunch lady's. I was kinda out of it so it wasn't a really effective experiment. From what I remember, I didn't seem to hear anything other than what she said out loud though.'_

'_And you didn't try to see if you were projecting your thoughts into her mind?'_

'_Um…no. Why would I?'_

'_Because my theory is we've been pushing thoughts into each other's heads when there's eye contact and not having them pulled involuntarily.' _he explained. "I can't speak for anyone but what happens between the two of us. Now are you hearing anything other than what I'm saying right now?"

"No." I shook my head. _'It's always one or the other, now that I think about it. Not to mention, everything in the stairwell were things I wanted to say but didn't out of politeness. But…I'm not sure about everything in the library. There were some things I wanted you to hear and you didn't.'_

'_That was because there was no eye contact if you recall. It could be possible that the eye contact is important to show intent.'_

"Could be, but I wasn't looking at you because I wasn't thinking that you couldn't hear me. The intent was there." I shrugged. '_Maybe we shouldn't split hairs on this though. I could ask you something horribly inappropriate that I think you wouldn't answer and if your answer comes straightaway, then we know it's a pull system for sure and I'd know the reason why your IDs say Jim Leonhard._'

'…_Points for originality. I was expecting a sex question._'

'_Well, that proves it since you're dodging the subject. But for the record, I prefaced my question with the words 'horribly inappropriate' just to make your guard go up before I even asked anything to make the test a little more effective. I wasn't actually going to follow through. Well, unless if you want me knowing about your sex life for some strange reason. Though…you don't strike me as the boast-y type._'

'_Not much to boast about when my pick-up lines apparently consist of telling women they look like hell.'_

Though I'm pretty sure it was meant as a joke, an attempt that took me completely off-guard at that, I couldn't help but feel a little twinge of guilt alongside the slight tugging sensation my lips were experiencing in spite of myself. "Yeah…probably not. I will say that it is an effective way to get a girl's attention… and maybe an open palm across the face."

"Duly noted." he replied. _'I wasn't lying when I said I was bad with these things.'_

'_It's ok. Really.' _I sent back. '_You've been through a lot and are probably running on next to no sleep. Not to mention…there's still the 'me tackling you' thing. Anyway…now that we've kinda established your little theory, could we…go somewhere else? Maybe back to the library? I'm afraid that someone will notice the epic pauses, stares and non-sequiturs._'

"Or you could actually make an effort to talk to me instead." he pointed out. "I'm perfectly capable of doing the same."

I narrowed my eyes a little, absentmindedly pawing my coffee cup. "You really don't want to go upstairs, do you?"

"No, I don't." he frankly admitted.

'_Well, are you h-_'

"Don't." His tone was deadly serious. "The last thing we need is a habit like that forming. Talk to me."

"Ok…" I said almost nervously. For someone who did his best to shoo me off at every turn for a while there…this was downright weird. "So…what are we talking about then?"

He shrugged.

I made no effort to stifle the sigh immediately borne from his answer. "You can't just say talk to me and expect _me _to do all the heavy lifting here Squall - especially when I told you my brain's not in the right mental space for that." I lightly chided. "…Work with me here or else I'll start hounding you about the whole Jim Leonhard thing again. It won't be pretty."

He gave me a look. "It's Leon_hart_. Not hard. Always has been, always will be - so get that out of your head. I'm not some kind of two-bit pornstar with a terrible made up pun for a surname." he gruffly shot back. "Furthermore, why are you so damn interested in that? I told you it was a screw up with my identification cards."

"Well, you always seem to get all up in arms whenever I ask so I assume it's more than just a screw up and it's making me curious, is all. Not that I expect you to actually answer me about that though. I'll level with you here - I brought it up to push your buttons."

"…The reason's not that interesting - you're making a mountain out of a mole hill." he said, rubbing his eyes with his right hand a little. "The foster parents who had me as an infant exploited a legal loophole that allowed them to change my given name because my mother wasn't legally considered an adult when she had me. That's it."

I cocked my head a little. "Actually…it kind of is. Why did they change it, if you don't mind me asking?"

He moved his fingers from his face and gave me another look. "You said it yourself when I first got here…my name is unusual - they didn't approve of it either. Didn't help that they thought of me as the heathen bastard child from the start. Not sure why they opted for Jim and not James though. Must be a country bumpkin thing."

'_Oh…wow.'_ I sent, not caring I made no effort whatsoever to say it aloud. _'That…must have been tough.'_

'_Correcting people was only a minor inconvenience…I wouldn't go as far as calling that 'tough.'' _

'_No, no. I meant…the other thing. Your foster parents…well, they don't sound very nice if they openly thought that about you.'_

'_They weren't.' _he frankly sent. "Now can we drop the subject?"

I didn't dare prod him further and answered him with a simple _'sure,'_ thankful to get as much as I had. But I couldn't lie - it was kinda funny how he didn't even notice that he'd slipped into sending thoughts as well. It was also kind of sad to hear the reason why he was so touchy about that question even if he didn't explicitly spell it out.

We sat there for a few moments in a semi-awkward silence, only mildly relieved when I took some sips of some of my coffee – a weak diversion at best but frankly the only one I had. I just…didn't know what to say or think of what I should say without worrying if I'd be treading on some topic he wasn't comfortable with. I mean, it was uncomfortable enough being linked to the guy's mind for some godforsaken reason without so much of an inkling as to why – piling on the awkward wasn't exactly on my to-do list for the day.

Then he just got up and left. And I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed in spite of the thoughts I just had.

But then…I noticed he wasn't headed out the door, but rather went to order something in the cafeteria. The faintest traces of a smile appeared on my face…could he be ordering what I thought he was? I took another sip of my coffee and looked on though it kinda proved to be a fruitless endeavor; his back was obscuring what was happening behind the counter because of the angle I was looking at. All I could see was slight arm movements suggesting that money was being exchanged and something small was being taken. When he turned around, I couldn't help but be a little let down – it was a rather large cup of coffee he had in his hand, not a smoothie.

Even still, he was coming back to me which was surprising. I took another sip of my coffee and timed it so my lips parted from the lid by the time he sat himself back down. A silly thought occurred to me as I prepared to give him a hard time just because.

"I was going to comment on the lack of smoothie but I gotta ask…where exactly did the Gil come from? I didn't see you fishing through any pockets."

And in that moment, I could have sworn he had a slight amused look on his face as he set down the coffee on the table along with some change. "I had a folded bill in my left hand this whole time." he plainly answered. "…Do I want to know why you asked?"

"No, I didn't think you pulled it out of your waistband or underpants if that's what you're wondering." I lied through my teeth. "Lack of sleep is all."

'…_You're a terrible liar.'_

This woke me up more effectively than the caffeine. _'Crap! I didn't send something I didn't mean to, did I?'_

He shook his head. '_No, I didn't hear anything from your mind when I came back. You're just a terrible liar._'

'_Ugh. Thank god this sending thoughts thing is a bit more selective and controlled than the telepathy stuff you see in some sci-fi movies. I think I'd have to crawl into a hole and die multiple times a day if I had absolutely no say in what went through. Not because I have a ton of inappropriate thoughts or anything like that…it's just that you need a little bit of privacy, you know?_'

'…_No argument there.' _he agreed. The connection severed the moment we broke eye contact but it didn't take a genius to suspect that the wheels were continuing to turn afterwards.

"Hey…don't worry. We'll figure this out in time, you'll see." I told him. When this immediately caught his attention, I suspected that I wasn't too far off the mark about where his thoughts had drifted to.

"I have no doubt of that but…" he began, drifting off slightly for a moment,_ '…I deliberately thought my order at the cafeteria lady to confirm this for myself. I know she didn't hear it because I'd asked for a smoothie in my thoughts instead of a coffee and during that pause she gave me the strangest look.'_

'…_So looked at you like you were an idiot? Well, I guess that proves-' _

'_-Will you let me finish?' _he sharply sent, _'She asked if I had a relative by the name of Raine.'_

'_Is that…?'_

'_Yes, it's her name.' _he answered. '…_She asked because I'm apparently the spitting image of her._'

I was completely dumbstruck. Why the hell did he come back to me so quickly?


	19. Chapter XVIII – Don't Walk Away

**Author's Notes – **In honour of April Fools, I am not beta-ing this so the joke's on you! There…was that a convincing enough argument to cover up the fact that a nap ate all my beta time?

-—-

_Chapter XVIII – Don't Walk Away_

Telepathy aside, I just couldn't fathom what was going on head right now.

"I know it's not my place but I'm going to meddle anyway." I told him. "Why aren't you talking to her? The odds of this kind of chance meeting are astronomical at the very least."

"Because I _don't_ want to know." he flatly replied. I was pretty sure I was sporting the world's dumbest expression on my face now. Seriously, your average 'deer in the headlights' look had nothing on this level of stunned and stupid.

"_Wh_-"

"_-Why?_" he sardonically parroted, "Because I'm not like you."

Again, I just…words, they escaped me.

With a fading steely look, he relieved me from my ignorance by sparing a few words. "What I'm trying to say is…you can't miss what you never had." he offered. "…What good will telling me about a person I never knew do? It won't change the fact that they're still dead."

I frowned a little. I saw his point but…at the same time, I saw through it as well.

"I get that line of thought but…something tells me you don't fully believe that."

He furrowed his eyes. "…What makes you say that?"

"The way you got mad at me for saying your legal name wrong." I began to explain. "You yourself had even said it was a minor inconvenience to correct people and yet you blew up at me for saying Leonhard and not Leonhart. Even if I ignored that and chalked that up to just being annoyed in the moment, there's also the fact that you called your own name weird and yet Zell had even seen you embarrassed about having to say Jim. And before you say it's because it's a country bumpkin name, you _could _have been particular about being referred to as James instead – and if you think about it, even knowing what your real name was would have required some digging in the first place. Piecing it all together, it sounds like you're protective of the one thing you know your mom gave you other than life. And if I didn't know any better, I'd say that you're sitting here in front of me instead of talking to the lunch lady because you're afraid of the possibility that a few words might undo the picture you've painted about her inside of your head for over two decades."

As soon as words died on my tongue, I just _knew. _His lips were too pursed, his posture a little too perfect and his eyes regained a little too much of their steel – the flawlessness of his façade told me everything I wanted to know. And honestly, it scared me to even think that I could read him with such ease when I'd claimed the opposite not even…what – three minutes ago?

And apparently it scared him enough too, judging by the way he was hastily gathering up his change in his left hand and collecting his still-full coffee cup with the other.

"Wait…don't go." I said, bolting out of my seat to reach out for the hand gathering the change. To no surprise, he retracted it.

"…You _were_ telling me to go a moment ago – make up your damn mind." he shot back, causing me to sigh a little. There was no winning with this guy. There really wasn't.

"I'm really sorry if I hit a nerve." I apologized. "I…just don't want you to pass up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and regret it."

"It's not an 'once-in-a-lifetime opportunity' if she's here 5 days a week in the same place." he flatly responded. _'Not that I exactly see why you concern yourself with things that don't affect your life at all.'_

'_I concern myself because that's what friends do.' _I sent. '_Or if the word 'friend' is too strong in your opinion, substitute that with 'random girl who can read your projected thoughts for some reason.' But seriously, even if you don't want to know what she was like for whatever reason, maybe it would be a good idea to see if you can find out practical information that might help us figure this telepathy thing out? You were asked about transition history because of your CET after all._'

It was only a split second after I was done sending that when he shook his head. "…Not today."

My ears picked up on the fact it wasn't a flat-out no so I made a conscious effort not to harass him further about it – he'd go when he was ready and today just happened to not be that day. And seeing as he was still just standing there and not bolting off in the opposite direction, I decided to make the most of it and capitalize on that instead. Or hoped to, anyway.

"Ok." I said, lowering myself into my seat again. I wanted to say something, anything that would entice him to stay but I found myself gravitating towards my damn coffee cup again.

But he sat down on his own accord without any prompting, much to my surprise. He busied himself by setting his change aside in a neat stack and opened his own coffee's tab. I stole another sip of my own lukewarm coffee, letting the sweetness of the cream and sugar linger on my tongue for a bit. Then I stole another long swig. But even though it was particularly-good today, especially good even, I just couldn't appreciate it.

"…I think they know something's up."

I lifted my head. "Huh?"

"It's…nothing specific." he clarified. "Just this suspicion I have, based on the fact we were in the same room together last night."

"Well, even I could have told you that." I tried to point out as politely as I could. "I mean, the whole 'special case' thing alone was kind of a dead giveaway. I'm not special – only you are."

"I wouldn't make that judgement so fast."

While I obviously knew the context here, and was definitely wondering how he was personally drawing that conclusion, I couldn't help but think of all those bad cheesy romance films where the male lead makes the long-awaited declaration that, no, she is _more _than what her stereotypically-abysmal self-confidence made her believe – she _is_ special and beautiful and insert any other thought-to-be desirable quality, ladies and gentlemen (obviously the latter were coerced into buying a ticket to any one of these trainwrecks…obviously). Then they make out, marry five seconds later and pop out a bunch of babies because that's how you know you have a happy ending in cliché movie-land.

Aand…he was still waiting for me to say something. Oh how I was grateful for the fact that he couldn't hear thoughts 24/7.

"…Um, how do you figure?"

'_Besides the fact you're the only one who can project thoughts in my head and vice versa at this point?' _he sent, "Honestly…I've always thought it was odd that they allowed you to stay here for so long. After yesterday, I thought that there might have been a reason for that."

"Well, there's an explanation for that._" _I began. "When I admitted myself, they had thought I was transitioning along with Selph because of my dark hair and eyes. It was only after that they realized I wasn't and said if I wasn't personally transitioning within two weeks I had to be discharged until I was. They more or less did it as a kindness to me, which I'd imagine was the case for you too. Anyway…after the whole Selphie incident, they basically offered a small settlement along with the option to stay as long as I wanted if the space was there."

"I still find it hard that they would promise something as vague and indefinite as that - you're still a cost to them even though there was space." he dryly countered. _'Racking up three years of food and laundry expenses with no funds coming back to them because you're not in treatment alone tells me there's a reason they want you here. Any rational cost-controlling organization would have given you incentives to leave long ago.'_

'_I…never really thought of it that way. It seems especially strange now since I didn't see them offering anything to you or Kari for yesterday. But…what would be so special about me that they could have picked up on all those years ago? There was nothing weird with me other than the fact I was just about as ignorant as someone who lived under a rock. Even then, I've seen quite a few people come through who were just as naïve as I was so it's not like I'd stand out for that reason._'

'_Wouldn't know. It's hard to when I don't even know what causes my condition._' he answered. '_But_ _getting back to my original comment, the head nurse said something that…seemed off._'

'_Like in what way?'_

'_She had said that it was clearly a mistake because they don't put patients of the opposite sex in semi-private rooms because of past problems. Then she made quip of, 'you'll have to wait until you're discharged before you'll be seeing stars again.' Do any of the nurses know about this tattoo of yours?'_

'_No, none of them do – you're the only one who knows.'_ I nervously sent. _'I've always dressed myself in the bathrooms and even with the incident with Selphie, all my scrapes and cuts weren't anywhere near there so they didn't need to lift my shirt. So you think there were cameras or maybe recording devices in our room?'_

'_I wouldn't put it past them but it might have been a turn of phrase.' _he answered. _'I would say that we might need to exercise some caution in anything we say upstairs to be safe.'_

'_Definitely. God…I can't believe so much has changed in these past few days. This place feels so much different th…'_

"I can't hear you."

My head jolted up from its slumping position. _'Sorry… forgot about the needing eye contact thing. Er, wait,' I paused, _"Didn't you want us to _talk_?"

"I did." he admitted, taking a small sip of his coffee. "I…don't know why I've been lapsing this much. It shouldn't be this difficult."

I shrugged. "Maybe it's like riding a bike? Impossible to think you'll ever be at that point and once you learn, you can't ever unlearn it?"

"If this was about anything but this, maybe." he replied. _'But this whole situation makes no sense. Logic should be telling me that I should be staying away from you because you're triggering…this. Hell, I even tried earlier and somehow I still found myself coming back to you. And here I still am. Sending thoughts to you because something that should not be happening in a million years is happening and I can't risk saying it out loud. Explain me that.'_

'_Um…' _Cheeks reddening, I stopped myself before it started again. "I…really don't know. I'm sorry."

"I'm not asking for an apology here, Rinoa." he flatly told me before rubbing his eyes vigorously with his thumb and forefinger. "It was a rhetorical question. And…thinking it over, I have no reason not to trust you."

My heart skipped a beat. This…wasn't exactly helping my current cherry-red complexion any though. There was definitely something at play here. I could…almost feel it in a way, vaguely at best but there was something.

"Well…that might be a big mistake. Then again, I've already kinda corrupted you with the smoothie thing, so that could arguably be the most logical step after seeing as they are so delicious and all – notwithstanding the fact you haven't technically had one yet." I tried joshing to keep the other thoughts at bay.

"…You're going to make me regret saying that, aren't you?"

But the truth was…it didn't exactly work. Reality had demanded to be paid attention to then, not cast aside with feeble attempts at humour.

"Actually…no. I appreciate it very much, in fact." I said. _'You could have just as easily cast me aside with all that potential evidence that something I didn't even see was going on and cut your losses, and yet…you're sticking by me instead. The fact that you didn't walk away when you could have…well, that says a lot too.' _

"The truth is though…" I quietly began saying aloud, "Is that I probably cracked that bad joke because this scares me just as much. It's been a long time since I've been able to reach out to anyone and just I'm afraid that…if you put your faith in me and take my side for something I don't think neither of us fully understands and something else happens…I…honestly don't know what I'll-"

"-Don't. There is no point in worrying about that - I have no life left to lose." he cut me off. "No family, no job, no friends…nothing except a few Gil in the bank, a car that should have kicked it years ago and an apartment that someone else will probably be living in at the beginning of next month. If I don't get through this, then so be it. I've already made my peace."

I couldn't lie here; it didn't even take a split second for my eyes to mist over.


	20. Chapter XIX – The Same Reflection

_Chapter XIX – The Same Reflection_

The mist dissipated the moment it came.

That was because I forced it to.

"If that was supposed to make me feel better, it doesn't." I hotly told him. _'It makes me sad that you think that. You may think you have nothing to live for, making it seem like you have nothing to lose but losing out on what you stand to gain, what you __**deserve**__ to gain, is still just that – losing. It may feel like all your hope's flickering out because you're still trying to come to terms with what you learned today but whatever you do, don't put it out of its misery and snuff it out completely, even if guarding that tiny flame seems like the hardest thing you've ever had to do in your life. Trust me, I know how hard that can be. I…still struggle with that myself, even now.'_

His chair tilted back with a noticeable shrill squeak, making me wince a little. He then crossed his arms.

"…So what are you holding out for?" he asked.

"…_Holding out for?_" I repeated rather dumbly.

"If you're trying to protect the hope you have, there has to be something making it worth fighting for in the first place." he dryly explained.

I wondered if it was just some attempt to shift the spotlight on me because after that quip about wondering why I bothered asking about things that _'didn't affect me,'_ I couldn't imagine him actually caring about anything I was fighting for. Even still, I did have an answer in mind so I guess it couldn't have hurt to give him some kind of inspiration…even though the thought of me being a role model was kinda laughable.

Staring into his eyes, I told him, "What I'm fighting for is a chance at having a good life, period. I don't know if that'll mean having a family and kids, a fulfilling career or hobby, a life full of travelling to interesting places, being surrounded by great friends or some combination of all those things but…I just want the chance to find out for myself. Whenever I get particularly frustrated or depressed by my current situation, I just remind myself that if I end things now, I'll never get that chance."

He uncrossed his arms slightly. "…You clearly have more faith in the future working out than I do."

"Well, the future has no guarantees but I figure that's no excuse to predict doom and gloom scenarios. Having a positive attitude helps sometimes, you know?" I said. "Don't look at me like that."

He furrowed his brows a little. "…Don't look at me like what?"

"You're totally rolling your eyes at me for that thing I said about having a positive attitude. It does work. Positive karma and all that."

"…You're mixing up the concept of karma and positive attitude attracting positive events theory." he dryly pointed out. "It's not interchangeable."

"You know what I meant, Leonhart." I retorted. "But I'll refrain from kicking your butt for being a jerkface again. Karma will reward me for my inaction."

"Doubt it."

"And why is that, pray tell?" I asked in what had to be the most annoyingly sing-song manner possible.

"Because there's no such thing as karma."

Now I was the one rolling my eyes. "Then why, oh why did you bother to correct me in the first place?"

"Had to on principle."

"Had to, huh? Well, you do kinda strike me as the anal-retentive type so I'm not entirely surprised. I am surprised that you'd know anything about the positive theory though."

"…In case you haven't noticed, I have the unfortunate distinction of looking like I'm scowling all the time." he said pointedly. "I've had enough of my foster parents and other strangers telling me, _'smile – you'll feel better'_ to last me more than a lifetime."

My eyebrows deliberately quirked upward. "So…you're not really mad at me 24/7 since it's just your face? Good to know." I joshed. He gave me an extra scowl-y look for that one. "Ok, ok, so maybe I deserved that one. But…I'm curious now – do you actually know how to smile?"

"No."

I smiled for him. "Liar. I've seen you smirk before – your face isn't frozen."

He gave me a weird look. "…When?"

"Ah ha, so you admit you've smirked at some point!"

"Right. Because it's obvious that I've catalogued every instance since I was a child." he sarcastically responded. "I asked because it's likely that you're mistaken."

"But how would you know that I was mistaken if you haven't catalogued all of them?" I teased.

'…_Why am I linked with you exactly?' _he sent in exasperation, _'You're going to drive me to drink. Heavily.'_

'_If you can find booze in this place, you're gonna have to tell me where it is because it looks like the nurses' stash is in a terrific hiding spot.' _I sent back. '_But to answer your question – maybe the sorceress had a sick and twisted sense of humour? That's about the only semi-logical answer I have other than us somehow getting secretly sucked into a tired sitcom plot. Obviously it would be a sci-fi rip-off of that show with the roommates who were complete opposites – it was called 'The Odd Pair' wasn't it? Not that it matters. What matters is that our rip-off trades the whole 'roommates' thing with just being able to read each other's minds. It would tank horribly because the viewers wouldn't be dumb enough to buy the whole 'reading minds' thing because it would require too many conveniently-timed staring contests.'_

"There is no way in hell I'm letting you near alcohol if you're like this sober." he dryly answered.

"I'm running on a few hours of crappy sleep and the caffeine hasn't kicked in yet. Give me a break." I mock-whined. "Besides, I'm a fun drunk."

He groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. _'…I think you were onto something with the sorceress having a twisted sense of humour idea.'_

'_Hey, I didn't really mean it- oh crap._'

He moved his fingers away from his face. '_Oh crap what?_'

I pointed to his nose. '_Your eyes – they were closed when you sent that thing about the sorceress because you were busy pinching your nose and groaning at me. Could this…be strengthening?_'

'_Maybe. Close your eyes and send something.' _The moment I closed my eyes however, I could already hear him. '_This is…not good._'

'_Um, I heard that 'this is not good.' Did you mean to send that?'_

'…_Yes and no. I was going to send 'this is a test' and was distracted halfway through._'

Whether or not he wanted to test further, my eyes flew open.

"…Why is that?" I asked rather shakily, not liking the look in his eyes or the colour of them either. He was back to the cloudy grey eyes even though his hair remained brown. "Are you not feeling ok?"

"I'm fine but…your eyes turned grey."

I found myself wanting to get up and find the nearest reflective surface but a simple sent thought of, _'Rinoa, don't,'_ tethered me down. I was rather perplexed and I'm sure it showed on my face as I looked into his eyes once more.

'_Why not?' _I sent, a little on edge.

'_Just…take my word for this – don't go check._' he advised. '_The less opportunities there are for people who know your natural colour to take notice, the better._'

'_I understand the concern given all this crap going on between us lately but…Squall, it's only going to be a matter of time when I'll start feeling really sick like you did if this is CET. I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place no matter what here.'_

'_I know. Just…if you can, try to delay the discovery until I'm not in the same general area. Not that it'll do much but…'_

'_-No, it's ok. I understand – you don't want to give them any reason to suspect a connection.' _

Right now, I couldn't help but feel a slight disconnect at what I was feeling as opposed to what I _thought _I should be feeling at this moment. Even as well-aware as I was about the possible negative outcomes, past-me had been quite looking forward to the moment when I'd finally transition and get on with my life – if it was in the cards, of course – and would have been happy that I was going through with this at 22 instead of so much later like my mom. But now? I felt as though the timing couldn't have been worse.

So much was going on in my head as it was and couldn't help but wonder if Squall had been right about the center having an ulterior motive for keeping me here for so long. The very thought of that hunch being right terrified me.

"…Rinoa?"

My head bobbed upward. "Yeah?"

"…It is getting stronger. I didn't hear everything but…some fragments came through." he quietly said. '_I could hear your thoughts about worrying if I was right about their motives faintly but distinctly and something about your mother transitioning later. I tried tuning it out but…nothing worked. If you want me to leave, I can._'

My stomach lurched. _'No, please stay. You can accidentally invade my thoughts all you want – I'm serious. Just…don't go._'

Like so many times before, the blue returned to his eyes. _'…I won't.'_

"_Thank you." _I told him aloud in a voice no louder than a whisper. A sigh escaped me. "I'm just so…not all here and overwhelmed right now."

"I kind of figured that when you used the words 'accidentally' and 'all you want' in the same sentence."

I shook my head, pretty sure that I was wearing a weary smirk right now in spite of myself. "You really are anal-retentive, aren't you?" I tried to joke.

He shrugged. "…I'd call it having a basic grasp on the dictionary definition of words but whatever."

Now I was damn sure I had a smirk on my face. "Smart _a—_"

There was pain all of a sudden. Blinding, zapping pain. It shot down the nerves along my left arm and-

Another zap hit. I quickly lowered my upper body, rested my forehead on the table and extended my left arm as far as it would go with my palm firmly planted on the table's surface so my upper arm wouldn't be resting flush against my torso anymore. Why the hell is this coming b-

"God! _OW._" I gritted out of my teeth. If this is what Squall went through…he really was a trooper.

When I wanted nothing more than to hack my arm off, I tried focusing on the sound of a chair moving instead. "Rinoa…?"

The proximity of his voice suggested that Squall was leaning against the table. My hunch was confirmed when I saw his one hand by mine but I didn't dare to look up. Another wave of pain made me angry and desperate enough to attempt punching the table for relief. With a clean hit against the particleboard, all I achieved was making my knuckles hurt enough to make me forget about the my upper arm pain for about a split second. My eyes watered over out of sheer frustration when the next wave hit; I could still see Squall's one hand leave, however.

But it was also the last thing I saw.

-—-

I wanted nothing more than to continue sleeping but my bladder was protesting against that idea, insisting that I finally get up and take care of that whole business.

Being not particularly fond of the idea of the alternative here, I slowly opened my eyes and reluctantly adjusted to the pitch-black darkness. But before I could do as much as budge an inch however, a thought jolted me.

…_When exactly did I go to bed in the first place? _

After scanning my surroundings and racking my brains for the answers that would not come, I temporarily claimed defeat and slowly moved the covers away, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed and dipping my toes onto the cold hard ground. The chill sent a minor jolt down my spine and I shuddered.

And then I remembered everything.

Without making a huge racket to wake up the new set of sleeping beauties I was rooming with, I speed walked to the bathroom to see the changes for myself, the intense need to pee be damned (and ignored) for a little while longer.

After closing the door and flicking on the light in quick succession, I…flinched. Flicking on that light was a bad idea - a necessary evil but still a bad idea on the whole. Then again, it wasn't exactly avoidable if I wanted to see this for myself but…everything about this damn situation was putting me on edge and making me a bundle of nerves and this just wasn't helping matters any.

Following a few false starts, my eyes adjusted enough to see more than fuzzy outlines of things in the mirror. And one of those things was the colour of the eyes staring right back at me.

They weren't the cloudy grey hue of a CET case.

…They were my father's piercing grey eyes staring back at me. And just about every relative of the Caraway family tree save for one Elizabeth Christine Caraway. Until now, that was.

That had to be a coincidence. It just had to.

After peeling myself away from the mirror to do what I needed to do, my legs seemingly acted on their own accord, hopefully bringing me to the one person who'd have answers and would actually answer me. I didn't care what time it actually was, I was determined to talk to him.

I took a deliberately roundabout way to his old room to avoid passing by the nurse's station. It wasn't like it would stop them if they were milling around the corridors but I figured it was a less likely occurrence and would give me time to think in any case.

I thought about asking him if it was just fever he dealt with when he started transitioning. I wondered why I wasn't feverish myself, even though I was a little sleepy. And most importantly, I couldn't help but worry about all the possible scenarios that could have happened after I'd blacked out, worry about Squall, worry about practically everything if I wanted to be honest.

The moonlight pouring in from the windows on the south side somehow incensed me to move further, move faster rather than to deter me from carrying out this borderline ridiculous mission to see him. Every stride became longer, every step became quicker and before I knew it, I was rounding another corner, and then another and then that final one to enter Room 6L. Then I stopped, held my breath even.

All the divider curtains save for one had been drawn. I didn't have to see him directly to somehow _know_ that his was the bed with them left open on the far left side. Trepidation washed over me, no, threatened to drown me. I was prepared to wake him up but never considered the possibility of him still being up for some reason. And yet, I didn't know why that very possibility bothered me so much.

I began to resume walking, inching closer and closer with every tiny step I took. As I neared closer to the bed, I could see the outline of backside come into view, knowing it was his by the tattoos poking out from the gown past the reach of the covers. Was he asleep? Maybe my thoughts weren't on the mark after all.

'_Squall?_' I tentatively sent, standing at the foot of his bed.

He didn't reply to me so I moved closer, walking towards the side of the bed he was facing. In spite of everything…I couldn't help but take a moment to smile at the sight before me. For someone who claimed he had the unfortunate luck of having a perma-scowl on his face, he looked so adorable while he was sleeping. Maybe it was because the virtue of simply being asleep erased all the traces of burden on his face, allowing his natural good looks to get a chance to shine with that well-needed dash of peacefulness on his face but…

"…_What are you doing here, Rinoa?"_

I nearly jumped two feet.

"…_Geez, way to give me a mini heart-attack, Squall." _I whisper-hissed back. When his eyes were finally open, I let him really have it. _'Besides, how did you know it was me?'_

He sat up and seemingly chose to ignore my question, rubbing his eyes rather vigorously instead. I crossed my arms.

"_Well…don't you have some kind of snarky response here?"_

He finally looked at me. "No, I don't."

"And why is that?"

'_Because there's a logical answer and it's something I've been hiding for a while.'_


	21. Chapter XX – I'll Be Your Downfall

_Chapter XX – I'll Be Your Downfall_

"What…do you mean?"

The words spilled out of my mouth before my mind had chance to register anything. He wasn't joking about me smelling from a mile away or implying that there was any telltale, but not out of the ordinary, sign that tipped him off every time I'd approached him so all I was left with was…well, thoughts I wish I didn't have to entertain.

"What I meant was…" he paused for a moment to look away and peer downward. "What happened today didn't come out of nowhere. I'd…only fooled myself into thinking it had."

My mind was racing and the fact that the room was silent for a good handful of seconds wasn't helping me or my nerves at all. The fact that those seconds were threatening to turn into a solid minute of pure wordless tension building was threatening to push this nerve-having business into full-blown nausea.

"…_Squall?_" I called out in a whisper to gently remind him of my presence.

I still received no response and was left even more bewildered as he developed a newfound fascination with his hands and acted near-catatonic all of a sudden. I mean, he wasn't a 15 year-old girl writing some vague, passive aggressive post on a social site, trying to drum up some attention while having no intention of explaining what she was referring to – there was no reason for him to dangle some vague insinuation that there was something up and not elaborate on what he meant. He was several years too old and way too pragmatic to pull that kind of crap in my opinion.

Well, I too was no stranger preferring more direct approaches either. I broke up the staring contest he was having with his hands by planting my own down on the edge of his bed for stability and craning my neck enough so I could look him directly in the eyes. He didn't move but his expression was unreadable in the darkness and so were his thoughts because I couldn't divine anything from him.

'_Finish what you start, Leonhart. You need to tell me what you were referring to.' _I firmly sent. '_I don't care what it is, how much you think it'll hurt me…I __**need to know**__._'

When he continued his game of mute, I deliberately shifted from this leaning position I was in to seat myself on the bed in order to save my neck but keep the intimidation factor of being in-slash-invading his personal space. Naturally this didn't go as smoothly as I wanted it to because I ended up partially sitting on his left leg by accident.

I was going to move off of him but I was suddenly frozen in place by a foreign sensation. It wasn't the subtle jolt of brushing against someone's body by accident, the sudden giddiness brought on by a caffeine high or anything I could really put my finger on. It was just…different.

'_You ease my pain whenever you're around.' _His response made me simultaneously tilt my head upwards and sideways. _'It felt like I was on my death bed for those first few days. When the periods of agonizing pain shortened…the doctors told me that it's never happened before. I'd assumed it owed to my drive to find Ellone but I never took in account the timing of the pain-free periods until today. After I'd carried you on my back to the second floor, I knew something was off when I was heavily questioned about how I had the strength to carry you upstairs single-handedly. When you were sent away and the pain started to return like it had when we'd went our separate ways earlier…I just knew._'

'_And now?'_

He furrowed his brow. '_…You're still doing the same._'

'_You're not telling me the whole truth._' I sent. '_There's something else weighing on your mind because telling me that I eased your pain all this time wouldn't need that much courage to say when you didn't make it seem like you were only allowing my company for that random perk.'_

'_I allowed your company because I didn't have the energy to shoo you away. And even when I did, you inexplicably returned with smoothies. It made no difference what I wanted._' he dryly sent.

I gave him a look. '_You pick the absolute worst time to be cute with me, you know that? The absolute worst._'

'_And you picked the absolute worst time to sit on me. Are we even now?_'

I don't know why it took me this long but I finally moved off his leg after that comment. _'There, I'm no longer crushing your thigh with my butt. Can we stop this game now and just be honest with one another?'_

'_It wasn't a game. It never was.' _he solemnly stated. With a flick of his fingers, a small flame appeared between us, illuminating both our faces a fraction more for a brief moment before the fire extinguished itself and we were only left with the soft glow of the moon provided by the window behind us.

There were no words. All I could do was look at him in horror; for some reason, the expression on my face didn't faze him in the slightest. After all, I wanted the truth and got it, didn't I?

'_These past few days, it was more than just alleviated pain – __I'd get__ these…sudden surges of energy that would leave me restless.'_ he simply explained as if it was nothing. '_They seemed to happen around the times you'd told me that my eyes turned back to grey. I have my theories but…nothing concrete. __After today's ordeal, I had so much energy stockpiled that it nearly pained me to sit still. By sheer luck, maybe necessity, I somehow found out how to do that. It__…the fire trick helped me get back to feeling somewhat normal._'

I just…looked at him for the longest time before I could say anything. And if I didn't know any better, I think the long pause was starting to affect him judging by the subtle changes were manifesting themselves in his otherwise-steadfast expression.

"_I'm sorry. This is just…very hard to process._" I whispered back. '_There are just so many unknowns and…_'

I stopped myself and just let out a huge sigh. I obviously had a million questions about his fire fingers but I put them aside for now - he needed to hear something different right now.

"_Aside from me stating the obvious here…just know that if you're worried that I might think of you any differently - don't, ok?_" I quietly began to tell him instead, making a point to looking him in the eye. Reaching out, I calmly placed my hand over his – specifically the one he'd conjured the flame from. '_But that being said, this obviously can't get out – especially when we know so little and they can use that to their advantage and since, well, I…don't think I have CET. I don't have any symptoms right now and the colour of my eyes right now is closer to my father's eye colour than yours.'_

I wanted to take a chance and tell him more about my suspicions but he responded before I could do just that.

'-_They know it's not. I overheard them say something about doing some tests in the morning because you had no fever or any of the other signs._' he sent. _'Don't go looking for me tomorrow.'_

'_I understand why but…will you be ok?_' I asked, '_I mean, we could find a quiet place to hide if you're feeling horrib-_'

'_No. I survived today, I can handle tomorrow.' _he firmly sent, slipping his hand out from underneath mine. '_I…don't want to become dependent on…this to get me through the day._'

'_Ok.'_ Trying to ignore the sudden change in temperature, I nodded. _'I guess…I'd better get going before someone walks in on us.'_

'…_That would probably be for the best.'_

'_Alright. See you…the day after?'_

He immediately nodded back.

Right then and there, I had the sudden urge to give him a big goodbye hug despite the fact that I should have known better than to have those kinds of ideas and thoughts by now. Naturally, when I tried to curb said urge with a handshake instead, he looked at me funny.

'_Not gonna lie here - I'm super scared about what the next few days might bring and my first impulse is to hug you tight. But I know that you don't do hugs so a handshake is me compromising. Can you please work with me here, Squall?'_

To my surprise, he actually ditched the confused look and extended his hand for me to shake. I took it in mine and shook it firmly – it was obviously no replacement for hug but…part of me was happy that he obliged my silly request all the same. Part of me was also sad that I had to leave and cause him pain however. Literally speaking, of course.

When our hands finally untangled themselves, I just went in for a hug since he was at the right angle anyway.

"…_Thought you said you weren't going to hug me._" he quietly pointed out, tensing a bit like I figured he would.

"_I know…but it just wasn't the same."_ I whispered in his ear. Then a thought jolted me and I let go. Immediately, I whispered, "_Wait, you're not going to be up all night in pain because I was right beside you for this long, are you?_"

He shook his head. '_I don't think it works that way._' he sent. With the moonlight catching his eyes at the right angle, I could see that his eyes were still blue. '…_Your presence only calms the symptoms. Whenever I get those surges and my eyes go back to grey…I think it might have more to do with me than you though I'm not entirely sure of the triggers involved._'

'_Well, that's good to know._' I sent back. Naturally this was before I realized how it could be taken but at this point, I didn't care and it didn't seem like he did either. In fact, I boldly decided to joke with him. '_Now I'll be able to turn you into huggy person without guilt then!_'

One of his eyebrows quirked upwards ever so slightly. '_…I think I was mistaken. You might induce spontaneous combustion._'

I snickered under my breath. _'…Spontaneous combustion, huh? I was worried that you might be up all night, not that you had problems controlling the urge to explode._'

That one eyebrow stopped quirking in order for him to shoot me a look. '…_I'm taking back those points for originality I gave you earlier today._'

'_Now that's really upsetting.'_ I deadpanned. '_I was hoping to cash them in for a cool prize. Well, assuming we weren't playing a game where everything's made up and the points don't matter._'

'…_Fine. Your points are reinstated. Stop talking gibberish at me._'

One last snicker escaped my mouth before a sober smile took hold. '_That's a tall order but I guess that can be remedied by actually doing that thing I was supposed to do minutes ago._'

Without much fanfare, I simply got up from my sitting position and off the bed entirely without causing as much as a squeak from the mattress to emit, walking to the foot of the bed before stopping to say anything to him to make sure there was at least some space between us before I said my goodbyes for the night. As expected, I received a curt nod from him before I went off on my own back to my own room and suddenly felt the weight of the world back on my shoulders again. It probably showed because my posture was pretty slouched by the time I'd turned rightward once I was out of the room.

While it would have been easy to just chalk this up to nerves and anxiety about what was to come tomorrow and all the days after but, I…could have sworn that I'd felt a distinct difference upon exiting the room. It made me wonder if I was now experiencing something similar to what Squall had been mentioning he felt. Obviously, more in spirit than the specifics he'd mentioned, just anything that would affect my current state of mind, mood or…whatever. Then again, this could very well just be a case of me being a huge hypochondriac.

"_I'd carry out your intimate affairs a little more discreetly, Ms. Caraway._"

If it was at all possible, I froze and jumped a million feet at the same time. That voice…

When she came out of the shadows of another room, my eyes doubled at the sight of a slender figure with a severe ponytail in form-fitting white black scrubs blocking my path.

My first instinct was to run the other way but…with the floor being a virtual circuit the point was moot. I still took a step back though.

"_I…didn't do what…you think I did._" I stammered before mustering a little bravado. "_Then again, it's a little rich to suspect that considering you were the one who put us in the same room the other day Nurse Remy._"

She audibly groaned. "_Whatever impression you got, drop it now. I'm on your side._" she whispered two inches away from my face.

"_I have a hard time believing that after what happened to Squall the morning after._" I coolly responded, though I damn well knew that I was playing with fire at this point.

"_Fair enough." _she conceded. A moment later however, she began to fish something out of her pockets. "_But I think you'll believe me after this._"

When a folded piece of paper was handed to me, she fished through her other pocket to produce a cell phone. After a few swipes and taps of her right pointer finger, what had to be some sort of flashlight app allowed her to shine some light on the paper I was holding. I just looked up at Nurse Remy once the light allowed me to see some chicken scratch.

"_This is Nurse Bear's writing._" I quietly said.

"Read it – it'll explain everything." she instructed. "Don't worry about someone walking in on us. A scheduling oversight made it so that I'm the only one on this floor for two hours – and there's another hour to go. There aren't any cameras along this stretch of hallway either."

With a slight nod, I fumbled with the piece of paper between my fingers to unfold it completely. My stomach conveniently decided to choose this moment to remind me that it was about 16 hours since I'd last had anything to eat but I shut up its whining with a few calming breaths.

Still…I hoped that this would be the last time in a long while that I'd be dealing with ghosts.

_Remy, I wouldn't normally put you in this position but if it's at all possible, the brother needs to be shown what happened to her before he possibly goes off to look on his own when he's feeling better. I just fear that he'll be in a situation like his friend was and I won't be there to reason with them not to imprison him on the spot because I suspect that he'll be as appealing to them as she is. I'd arrange it myself but I've been shipped to the 3__rd__ floor because he suspects something (hence the low-tech-iness here). The next page has the details on how to go about it…_

I couldn't seem to unglue my eyes from the sole page I held in my hands — I just had one thing on my mind and one thing only right now.

"…_She lied to me._" I murmured aloud, mostly to myself. "_They __**did**__ know I was there_."

"And it won't be long before they approach you again after today's events._"_

I looked up.

"…What do you mean?"

"You're finally transitioning and it's nothing like anyone's seen before." she pointed out. "You're not a regular case or even a standard CET case – and anyone with brains would say that neither is he. This is their excuse to bring out the heavy-hitters to poke around you and your friend's business."

"…So what you're saying is that we're as good as dead then."

"If you don't listen to what I say next, yes."

Needless to say, horrified was just an understatement here.


	22. Chapter XXI – Not Going Anywhere

**Author's Notes – **In honour of this birthday update, my gift to you is a comparatively-less evil, but super-short chapter (sorry – I blame micro time compression making the days escape me!). Make of that as you will. ;)

-—-

_Chapter XXI – Not Going Anywhere_

Frozen in place, I couldn't even manage a nod. She just continued on when the silence loomed over our collective heads.

"You need to limit the amount of interaction with him and the paramedic." she sternly told me. "They would be fools not to notice your friendships with them and I can almost guarantee that they'll use either of them as leverage to get what they want. They aren't above drastic measures against part of their own, but I'm sure Allison told you that."

"Yeah…she did." I half-heartedly answered. "…I should know all about that after what happened to her."

There was a trace of confusion on Nurse Remy's face. A moment passed and I couldn't take the stillness anymore.

"Don't tell me…you _didn't_ know they killed her?" I said, exasperated. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that I'd gone mad. How was it possible that no one had the faintest clue what happened?

Once my words left my tongue, it didn't dispel the stillness I wished to drive away for good. She was still looking at me with a puzzled look. It was fading but it wouldn't disappear completely.

"Zell said someone found her dead in the bathroom and it didn't look like a suicide." I explained. "And I believe him because he gave me a note she wrote for me that fell out of her pocket when she was being transported to be examined. It made it seem like she was going to find another way to keep in touch after she felt bad that those…people forced her not to talk to me anymore – you wouldn't write something like that just to kill yourself after."

After I explained everything in more detail than I wanted to, her expression was finally free of the confusion, or so I assumed with her right thumb and forefinger pinching her nose and a sigh escaping her lips.

"…_She's damn lucky it was Dincht behind me during transport and not someone else. Damn fucking lucky she's always got horseshoes up her ass. I legitimately don't understand why she doesn't buy lottery tickets more often._" Moving her fingers back, she looked me straight in the eye and I just…gave her the strangest look.

"_Please…tell me there's a reason why you didn't refer to her in the past tense._" I asked in the tiniest of voices.

"Because no one used proper English around me as a child. That's why." she answered, perhaps a little too abruptly with that ridiculous answer – it made my heart skip a beat. "But enough of this talk. Allison _will_ kill me if I don't impart the information you need to know now."

_Will. _I never in my lifetime expected that _'will'_ of all words would become my new favourite four-letter word. I mean, _'free'_ was and still is kind of hard to top in my opinion.

As elated as I wanted to be over this news, I had to tether myself to reality; it wouldn't matter if Allison was alive if I, or anyone else I cared about for that matter, wasn't because I was too busy with my head in the clouds to pay attention.

"I understand." I said with a knowing nod. "So…when you say limit my interactions, what did you mean exactly? I mean, if they already know they're my friends then what good will it do? Wouldn't the sudden change in behaviour tip them off in some way?"

"In short, ignorance is bliss and ignorance is also the best way to make them useless as tools to use. I don't care if you talk about random day to day stuff, preferably on the main floor and not here, but as far as this goes, you say nothing to either of them. Which brings me to my next point," she explained, "-whatever was going on in there, it needs to stop."

I blinked a couple of times. "I…don't know what you're talking about."

"I'd tell you to stop playing dumb but something tells me you really have no clue here. In short, when I said you should have been more discreet, I meant it – the walls here aren't as thick as you believe they are. I heard the most confusing conversation on the planet with nothing to lead me to believe that the lack of cohesion owed to you two randomly whispering things in each other's ears. I don't want you to tell me the reason but I am serious when I say it needs to stop because that is precisely the kind of reason they'd use against you to justify the means to their ends."

I would have gulped had my throat not been bone-dry. But that didn't stop me from jumping ten feet when I felt a presence behind me - guess my jumping game was on fire tonight. I just hope the next time I'd inevitably be scared by Squall again wouldn't cause me to conk my head against the ceiling.

Not even bothering to acknowledge that he was interrupting the discussion, Squall calmly said, "-Guy in the far right bed in 6L turned."

And just like that, Nurse Remy dropped our discussion completely. "Judging by the calm walk over here, I assume that he's properly tethered?"

Squall shrugged. "I would assume so since I heard some bed rattling."

"Then I would ask you to stay somewhere on this floor in the meantime, preferably the activities room. I will let you know when the bed's occupant has been taken care of." Then she turned to me. "And by the time I'm done, I expect to see you in your own bed and _asleep_, Ms. Caraway."

I feebly nodded, not exactly in the mood to point out that I'd been asleep for the better part of the day, making it unlikely that I'd fall asleep on command – especially not when she'd put so much in my head to think about.

When she hesitantly left to take care of things and entered Squall's room, I looked at Squall and before he could even send me a thought, he gently grabbed my hand and as he walked, I followed.

To where?

…I hadn't the faintest clue.


	23. Chapter XXII – Time Will Rise and Fall

**Author's Notes – **Here's the rest of what I had intended to write for the 4th's update (but had epically failed at doing). Enjoy?

_-—-_

_Chapter XXII – Time Will Rise and Fall_

If I wanted to be honest, I wasn't paying much attention to where he was leading me to since my thoughts were a little more preoccupied with a more important question which revolved around the fact that I couldn't quite figure out_ why_ he felt the need to drag me somewhere in the first place. Going against my natural instinct to ask, I saved the question on my tongue as he led me down the hall, led me through the door to the currently dimly-lit stairwell and down the aforementioned stairs. By the time I thought it would be safe to speak up when we reached the bottom of the steps, he ushered me to the right corner and beat me to the punch.

'_In short, I didn't hear all of that conversation - what did she say?_' he sent.

'_Aah, ok. Well…the nurse explained that Nurse Bear's the reason why she arranged for you to safely see Ellone – she was worried that you might try to find her on your own and repeat my mistake without anyone being able to…plea on your behalf to not be imprisoned in that lab. Also, she told me that we need to stop…this.'_

Squall tilted his head. '…_The telepathy, you mean?_'

'_That and everything else._' I answered, reluctantly freeing my own hand. '_She also overheard the 'incoherent' conversation we had and said we need to stop because we'd become even more interesting to the researchers. She wants you and Zell to stay in the dark about any changes I go through and vice-versa so no one can be exploited for information. Not to say that she wants us to cut off all communication but…she said it would be best if it was limited to casual chit chat._'

I don't know why but I still felt the need to take a huge breath even though I'd sent all that and not spoken it. Maybe it was a force of habit or maybe it was simply because I still felt drained from all the exposition but whatever the case was, another thought halted all my other trains of thought.

'_If…you don't mind me asking,_' I prefaced kind of timidly, '_-was there a reason why you took me here instead of just going to the activities room, I mean, it is pretty much as private as this stairwell but far closer._'

'_Because I heard part of the conversation where she asked you to stop what we were doing in my room. I wanted to make sure we'd have some time to disperse if anyone came through the door to avoid catching us in the middle of a telepathic discussion.' _he explained, a hint of agitation colouring the words and making me reconsider pointing out that it was moot point if she used the elevator and went through the door on the main floor. '_Contrary to what she said, the walls do not have ears unless if you're deliberately standing close enough to the door._'

'_-So…what are you implying by that? I mean, if she's working with Allison, she'd obviously be on the lookout for anything we'd be doing while she's…wherever she is to make sure we'll be ok.'_

'_I'm not. My point is that we would have been screwed us over if it had been anyone else listening in so obviously, I'd rather not leave us open to repeating the same mistake.'_

"Ah, I see. So…should we stop this now and listen to her suggestion?" I softly asked.

'_Yes and no. Zell shouldn't know about this but I don't think it would be wise to create ignorance. Telepathy-wise…' _he paused for a moment,"…it should stop completely."

"I was thinking the same." I agreed. "So, now that all this is cleared up, ready to go back up? I'm supposedly due to be back in my bed and asleep about now."

He shrugged. "…I guess."

"You guess?" Prompted by his ambivalent tone, I decided right then and there to swap our earlier positions by taking his hand in mine to lead him somewhere other than upstairs. Naturally, he wasn't as complacent with this arrangement as I had been.

"Why are you…?"

"You weren't sure about going back up right?" I quickly answered as I carefully exited out the main level door, almost having to drag him so he'd follow, "Well, I figure that she wouldn't be _too_ mad at me if I took you to somewhere _'more secluded'_ to explain everything – besides, I think there's a matter of payback for earlier."

"…Not sure why my actions warranted payback." he grumbled.

"They do, don't you worry." I replied in a sing song manner, pretty sure that I could feel his annoyance just radiating around me. It was strange considering he was still allowing me to drag him around the hallways but I wasn't about to look a gift chocobo in the beak. …Well, that was assuming that gift chocobos could be kind of disgruntled-looking and still be considered suitable as gift-worthy.

Nevertheless, this disgruntled chocobo was still allowing me to drag him around for the time being so I had to think of a destination quick before he'd go rogue. I figured that it was sometime after midnight considering that the cafeteria was closed when we passed by it and all the lights were at reduced brightness. Oddly enough, the dim lights didn't make our trek around the deserted circuit creepy – it made me feel tranquil, calm even. It was reminiscent of the days when I would sneak out of my room and aimlessly walk around my neighbourhood at twilight just because I could, just taking in the pure beauty and stillness of my surroundings underneath the stars and streetlamps - time always seemed to stand still during those walks and I loved every stolen moment. Stealing a glance at Squall, I noticed that his features were a little tense, suggesting that he was possibly in need of distraction. Then I got an idea.

"I've found just the spot for us." I told him, causing him to look my way.

"…Where?" As we rounded the bend by the gift shop, I pointed to my right with my free hand and his eyes followed the direction I was gesturing towards. "…Isn't it a little cold to be going outside in the courtyard?"

"Yes." I frankly answered. "But don't worry, the doors are also locked at this time of night so we won't get that far anyway. We're going to watch the stars from the doors' window panes."

He gave me a quizzical look so I gave him an impish smile in return as I let his hand go. "You don't have to but I figured since you didn't fight me so far, might as well go for broke, you know?"

"It's hard to go for broke when the building's too tall to see anything at this angle." he dryly pointed out. "And I didn't fight you because it made no difference whether I was wasting time here or upstairs."

I groaned – not only for the part he was right on but for the other thing too. "I'm starting to think you have a pathological inability to admit that maybe, just maybe, you don't actually mind my company because your actions are clearly telling me otherwise. I mean, you're still standing here even though I freed your hand, aren't you?"

He turned on a dime and started walking in the other direction back towards the gift shop and cafeteria.

"Hey!" I indignantly shouted as I speed walked so I could be back beside him. "I resent that."

He turned his head a little and shot me a certifiable wry look. The bastard. Oh wait…er, I meant jerkface. Yeah. Jerkface.

And for that transgression, I playfully punched him in the bicep when I caught up. "Meany."

Now if I didn't know any better, I thought I heard an afterthought of a chuckle. "…You're the one punching me and somehow, _I'm_ the meany?"

I stuck my tongue at him in response because I'm uber-mature like that. "Yes, you definitely are the meany. A nice person would have stuck around despite what I said."

He quirked an eyebrow. "…So, by that logic, nice people ignore you?"

I narrowed my eyes. "Now you're just twisting my words." I grumbled.

"No, I believe I'm using them against you."

"Are you always this snarky when you're not completely under the weather?"

"No."

"So what _are_ you like then?" He shrugged, not giving me any explanation more than that. Figures. "Let me guess…you're selectively-mute?"

"…Maybe."

I chuckled a little; I hadn't expected a response from that. "Well, your timing either has a lot to be desired or is rather impeccable. I haven't decided which I'm going with yet."

"Leaves a lot to be desired."

"Oh…so that's what you wanted me to go with, huh?" I asked rather confusedly as we rounded the second bend past the cafeteria.

"No."

"So why did you say that?"

"Because the expression is _leaves _a lot to be desired_,_ not has."

"Ugh…you're being a jerkface again." I groaned.

"…It's not like you're forced to be anywhere near me if I'm being a quote-unquote _'jerkface.'_" he dryly responded.

"Yeah, but see, we have this weird thing where you feel like crap if I don't stick around." I gently reminded him. "And while it doesn't seem to go both ways…_yet_, I would _metaphorically_ feel like crap if I let you suffer unnecessarily so I'll put up with _your_ crap because I'm a nice person. And no, that doesn't mean that I ignore myself before you bring up our previous conversation."

"Wasn't going to."

After the words left his lips, the quiet stillness took hold again, the abrupt shift serving as the catalyst for a thought I'd never really considered before. As we approached the door to go back upstairs, I was at odds with myself. I knew that if we passed that threshold and stepped on that very first step of the stairs, I wouldn't be able to ask Squall since he wouldn't want our secret spilled and we weren't supposed to indulge our collective abilities to communicate non-verbally anymore. Ugh, if only our _other_ collective ability to have the worst timing ever wouldn't have screwed that up, this decision would have been so much easier. Well, a fraction easier, anyway - this thought was naturally one of the ones I couldn't quite decide whether or not it belonged with my growing collection of thoughts that needed to remain confined in my head.

At the very moment my fingers and palm made contact with the door leading to the stairwell, I stopped.

"Small but serious question before we go upstairs again," I began to say as I looked back at him before I pushed the door, _'-um, would you have stuck around me for as much as you did if it wasn't…well, this?_'

He gave me a look – and I was pretty sure that it had nothing to do with the fact I'd slipped with the telepathy again. Guess I'd made the wrong call. Go me. "…Why are you asking me that?"

My hand lowered a little; there was no going back at this point. _'Well…it kinda came to mind because of the whole jerkface thing. I mean, we're two very different people and I probably annoy you…a lot, especially now…asking this question right as we're at a door and making things super awkward with my dumb timing. Again.'_

When Squall sighed, I just wanted to crawl into a hole to hide but since I had no digging tools, I went for the next best option – I unceremoniously pushed the door wide open and went through it.

…Or I _would_ have if it hadn't connected with something solid mid-arc which put an end to that escape plan.

I squeaked my head past the door to see who I'd hit and ended up staring at an unimpressed and downright frazzled-looking Nurse Remy holding her head with a bloody nose with only an inch or two between us.

"Contrary to popular belief…the words _'go to sleep'_ and…_'please stay upstairs' _are not interchangeable for…_'go downstairs'_ and '_attempt to_…_break a nurse's nose.'_" she pointedly mentioned after taking a moment to collect herself, sounding slightly out of breath and understandably nasally.

I stepped back and gave Squall a sheepish look only to see her walk past me in a huff a second later and attempt to grab him by the gown collar instead of tending to her nose. Attempt being the key word as instead of the intended effect of dragging him forward, she ended up loosening the top knot in the back, making it look like he was wearing some kind of droopy-collared women's blouse instead once she let go. Admittedly, I was a tad distracted by the unintended results to notice that she'd turned her sights onto me prior to the feverish sigh escaping her lips.

"Rinoa, ogle him later…I n-need a favour." she stammered, stumbling a little on the spot as she moved her hands back to her temples. "T-think I was nicked by the patient who turned. P-please help me…check."

My stomach plummeted a split second later. How was I supposed to do that if she'd already smeared blood all over the place?

"By your left elbow." I heard Squall calmly tell her shortly after. She moved her hands down to inspect the cut for herself.

"S-s-shit, I…wasn't imagining t-things." A heavy stabilizing sigh punctuated by a few stifled wet sniffles followed after. We all knew what was going to happen next but…I was too frozen to ask how she wanted to… "…I w-won't stay me for long. P-please…my pockets."

"Rinoa, take the one, I'll take the other." Squall instructed.

Without thinking about it much, I did as I was told and dug through the left pocket while Squall took the right; I ended up pulling out all kinds of folded papers that I immediately stuffed into my pyjama pants' waistband while Squall had fished out a covered syringe full of what I knew was the solution they used to euthanize people.

My eyes bulged.

Strong bloodstained hands latched onto my neck, crushing my windpipe and nearly raising me off the ground completely. Clipped fingernails soon began to dig into my skin deeper and deeper and I was forced to stare into ruby-red irises until I closed my own eyes in some kind of vain attempt to concentrate on breaking out of her grip by flailing and kicking and screaming and crying.

Then everything stopped.

I fell sideways to the floor with the zombified Nurse Remy right on top of me, knocking what little wind I still had out of my lungs. When she was pulled off me two seconds later, I gasped for air my body so sorely craved though I wasn't sure if it would be a fruitless exercise in the end. Without thinking about it much, my eyes followed suit in the _'doing potentially-pointless actions'_ department as they slowly cracked open soon after. While everything hurt, ached and radiated pain at the moment, it was the sight in front of me commanded all of my attention instead.

Those eyes of his were always so hard to ignore, after all. Losing myself in them was the only reason why I was able to endure the most deafening silence I'd ever experienced in my life as my hand slowly traveled upward.

"_I'm…__…_"

…But it also made seeing him crouched down and unable to finish that sentence hurt more than discovering broken skin caked with semi-dried blood underneath my fingertips however.

"_No." _I whispered back, fighting back my own tears upon seeing his eyes water over. _"It's not your fault. Please…don't blame yourself. Go somewhere else before you get hurt._"

"…No."

"Squall…_go._" I lightly nudged him in the stomach to emphasize my point.

Of course, he decided to be the epitome of stubborn and didn't shoo, opting to move closer instead so those goddamn eyes of his would be even harder to escape.

"I'm not going anywhere." he sternly told me. A cross between a sigh and a sob escaped me.

"…I've decided that your timing _leaves a lot _to be desired, just so you know."

"Duly noted." he dryly answered, still not budging an inch.

I wanted to do something, anything to make him change his mind but my body seemed to have other plans as I couldn't seem to keep my eyes open anymore and the tears at bay. One by one, all my thoughts began to escape me no matter how hard I tried to hold onto the moments of clarity between the flashes of intense searing pain overriding everything. Everything aside from a newfound sensation of warmth encircling me.

Eventually, it became the only sensation I felt.


	24. Chapter XXIII – Half Moon

_Chapter XXIII – Half Moon_

The feeling I couldn't escape was Squall Leonhart voluntarily cradling me, voluntarily throwing everything away, voluntarily choosing impending death and _I…_

…I was voluntarily allowing him to because I couldn't fight him anymore.

No, that was a lie – I could fight him all I wanted, but I didn't want to. I was probably nothing more than some weird girl he might have sort of, maybe, possibly considered a friend-like acquaintance but he'd just lost his sister and his head was probably in such a miserable place right now that what was happening to me now was probably on the verge of triggering some sort of psychotic meltdown. If holding me would help him a little, I'd let him.

But if I wanted to be honest with myself, I also let him because I was scared.

…Really scared.

And I was infinitely thankful he let me hug him back and bury my head in the crook of his neck as we just lied there on the cold hard floor. I was also grateful that time had been kind enough to stand still for a moment, even if it was only the result of my mind playing tricks on me, seeing as it didn't seem like I was going to get one of those fancy _'life montage in flashback-form'_ things.

'_Rinoa…?_'

'_Mm?_'

'_Can you look at me?'_

My breath hitched a little but I unburied my head and cracked my eyes open for him rather effortlessly despite the severe lack of space between us made me a little on edge. My nerves were making it so hard to stay still that I had to pretend that his personal inspection of my eyes was just a staring contest that we were having (and one that he was royally sucking at).

But even I was sure that my mad pretending skills couldn't forge the look I saw on his face. It almost looked…peaceful?

"_You're not infected._" he softly told me. _"Your irises are still light grey."_

"…_Really?_"

"Really. We've been lying down for much longer than it took for the nurse to turn." he reiterated. "Does your head still hurt?"

Now that I thought about it, my head _had_ stopped hurting a little while ago – it was just preoccupied with thoughts quickly filling it to the brim again.

"No…it doesn't anymore." I sheepishly answered back.

Slowly, I got up and looked back at Nurse Remy – as difficult as it was to see the nurse frozen in place, it just made it easier in every other respect; I heard Squall follow suit and get up to walk around to the other side of her. The only consolation to be found right now was that her eyes were closed and her arms were peacefully set in a way that made her look like she was merely taking a nap on the floor; no one would ever know that she'd spent the last moments of her life trying to strangle me. I know it didn't really matter what she looked like when rigor mortis set in but…it was important to me that she still looked like the nurse I'd known and not the monster the curse had made her become to anyone else who would see her.

Looking away from the body, I noticed that Squall had his hands behind his back, presumably untying the other knots of his gown. When he caught my gaze, he gave me a knowing, borderline shy, look.

"Gown's ruined so I'm going to cover her with it." he quietly explained. I nodded back.

"I figured that was why you were doing that." I lamely added, silently wondering how it was exactly ruined as he was now hovering over Nurse Remy to carefully drape the gown over her. "Are we going to inform someone at the receptionist's counter about what happened?"

"Not yet." He looked over at me. '_You need to get cleaned up and those notes you pulled have to be read and disposed of immediately._'

I tensed a little. '_I understand about the notes thing but…I know she broke skin. I don't want to tempt fate here and accidentally rub in infected dried blood into my wounds._'

'_Rinoa, I don't think you'll have that issue – if it was ever going to happen, it would have happened already when it was fresh._' he sent back. '_You can't make it easy for them for prod even further when they inevitably use this as an excuse to examine us._'

I absentmindedly nodded and started leading him towards where the nearest bathroom was, silently praying that the dark patches of blood on my neck wouldn't show up clearly on camera because of the dim lighting.

It took all I had in me not to be violently sick because if I put all the pieces of the unspoken puzzle together, any chance at having a life outside these walls was reduced to virtually zero. I wouldn't even have the luxury of grovelling to my father for forgiveness and strip myself of every shred of dignity I had just to spring myself out of here.

But strangely enough, that was not the scariest part in all of this.

That coveted title belonged to the fact that Squall wanted me to help me_ hide_ my potential usefulness to the researchers without hesitating for even a _nanosecond._ Why? Because doing all this would not benefit him in the slightest - it would not help bring Ellone back, it wouldn't affect the researchers' opinions about him being of use to them and so on and so forth. And even if I was a friend-like acquaintance, the fact remained that I'd only known him for about a week and a half – any logical person would just be looking out for themselves here.

Ok…so maybe I'm just overthinking big time here. I mean, I'm just washing up – hardly anything ground-breaking. Any reasonable person would wash up at this point because of the itchiness and gross out factor, right?

"Men's or women's?" I heard Squall quietly ask, snapping me back to reality.

"Uh…you're going in too?" I dumbly answered.

'_Well, I'm not going to start reading those notes out here while you're washing up._' he sent.

'_Oh…right._' I sent back, still greatly afflicted with the dumb. The fact I spotted another tattoo on his side didn't help matters any. '_Um…women's since there's usually more male staff on at night?_'

'_Makes sense.'_

When he immediately started walking towards the door of the washroom I'd chosen, I quickly squeaked around him to go through first. Or I would have if I hadn't decided to turn around to explain myself first and effectively and awkwardly wedged myself between him and the door.

'_I know it's late at night but I need to see if the coast is clear first since no one in their right mind would mistake you for a woman. I'll just be a second.'_

I turned around and pushed the door open to walk inside the room.

Upon making sure that we would be alone — in spite of a few nearby burnt-out lights making things difficult, it took one whole second of my time — I took advantage of my moment alone to pull out all the folded papers out of my waistband. Looking down at the folded wads of scribbled-over pages, I silently made a wish that Squall would find something useful to gleam from them before finding myself staring at my own reflection in one of the bathroom mirrors. The crimson-red fingerprints…they were perfectly aligned with the half-moon indentations of broken skin like I'd expected them to be and yet it proved to almost be too much to have the confirmation screaming back at me.

By all logic, I should have turned. And yet I didn't. The big question still remained though. Did I carry some kind of genetic anomaly like a different kind of offshoot like CET or did it go deeper than that?

Quite frankly, I didn't know why I was entertaining this line of thought - I didn't want to think about the answer here.

Trying to shove the thoughts down, I opened the door to usher Squall in and hand the folded notes to him.

'_Just to be safe, read these from inside one of the stalls so you won't be immediately seen with them in your hands if someone barges in, ok? I'll knock on your stall when I'm done washing up.'_

He nodded and walked over to the furthest-away handicap stall, leaving me virtually to my own devices again once I could hear the faint click of lock. Approaching the mirror closest to me, I turned off my brain and just cupped my one hand underneath the faucet while cranking the knob above it with my other hand to make the water near-violently fill and instantly overflow the cupped hand. I didn't care about the splashback it caused just like I didn't care about how messy I was making things after I dabbed a little liquid soap onto my middle and pointer finger and gently lathered up sections of skin until the soapy bubbles weren't pure white anymore. It also didn't matter to me that it looked like I'd lost a fight with a fountain after I gingerly splashed away all the soapy blood and my neck still looked as stained and blotchy as if some overzealous guy had given me a bunch of hickeys with crimson lipstick for some reason.

But it did matter because my brain had never truly shut itself off and it knew that having a blotch-free neck and appearing sane in general was the whole point of this – what I'd achieved here was the exact opposite. Well, my hand turned off the tap anyway and I stepped back from the sink altogether because I knew that this was as good as it was going to get since this place didn't have paper towels, just an ancient hand-dryer.

Faster than I could register the stall door opening, I heard my name on Squall's lips. I held my breath, bracing myself for the worst as I turned around and found him already right in front of me.

He extended one of the folded pages to me. _'This is the only one with new information. After you read it, let me know – I'm going to shred and flush the other two in the meantime.'_

I nervously nodded, taking the piece of paper in my hand as he doubled back to where he'd come from. It took me a moment to muster up the courage to unfold it only to have that strength disappear the moment I realized that it was the second page of the note Nurse Remy had showed me and there seemed to be more to the note than short and sweet point form directions on how to securely get Squall to see Ellone. A lot more.

I swallowed the huge lump that had formed in my throat, looking everywhere aside from the note between my fingers. It literally took the stall acoustics-amplified sound of paper being ripped to actually try reading the words below the instructions part simply to avoid that kind of awkward and uncomfortable situation when you're having a hard time reading something because you're well aware that someone is staring at you, or otherwise just waiting for you in general, and it completely fries your ability to concentrate like extra-crispy bacon.

_Again, I'd really appreciate it if it can be done. It's not every day where they find out that they have a third generation CET patient in this place, let alone a CET case that can take the pain from the magical power surges without blacking out or going comatose period. I wish I could say that the lack of brazenness this time around with the brother was a sign but I wouldn't place much confidence in Odine's willpower to abstain from low-hanging fruit. I fear that I've only stalled the inevitable with his friend and that the doctor's patience is simply the precursor to a calculated fell swoop in the near future._

_Please, keep them both safe and, if you see any funny business going on between the both of them, separated (though I think that might be an exceptionally-tall order so you might have to settle for making them cut it out)._

_-Ally_

I folded the letter in half but could not bring myself to start shredding it as the sound of the flush from the stall Squall was in caught my attention and I found myself taking a few steps closer, but not close enough to be accidentally hit by the door's arc if it opened. After stealing a small breath, I called out to him in the most assured voice I could manage.

"Hey, I'm done reading."

A second later, he responded, "…It's not locked."

A slight jolt started ricocheting around my stomach. Tamping down the feeling, I reached out for the handle and peered inside the stall. He was sitting on a closed toilet seat with his elbows huddled together on his knees, looking a little blue in the face. Despite my thoughts being in every which direction at the moment, I still frowned.

'_You really shouldn't have taken off that gown, even if it was stained._' I lightly chided as I walked in and re-locked the door, extending my hand for him to take the letter I was holding afterward. _'I'd give you my shirt but it's a little too small and damp in places to do the trick.'_

He sighed as he took the page. _'I know…but I needed it off. I'll live.'_ he tersely explained before adding a sardonic, '_…For now, anyway._'

Needless to say, this didn't help my frown any. '_I wish I knew the words to make you feel better after reading this but…unfortunately they seem to be at the tip of my tongue right now.'_ I rued. "But…I do want to thank you for sticking around when I thought I was…well, you know. Either way, it meant a lot to me."

"It's…nothing."

There was something to be gleamed from his spoken response and the slight pause but I let it go, making it part of my thanks for earlier; after I gave him a simple nod in response, he wasted no time in moving on.

'_I can still see blood stains on your neck.'_

I blinked hard. I was so off base with what I thought he was going to say next that it wasn't even funny.

'…_And you didn't tell me this earlier why?' _I grumbled, somehow finding the energy to even muster feeling annoyed, _'I mean, I already knew that there were some blotchy parts before but I guess what I'm trying to say here is that why have me come in here just to tell me to go back out and wash up better? I'd thought the reason you called me in here was to discuss the letter.'_

'_It was. But I'm also more than half a foot taller than you standing up and you were standing in the dim section of the room – I didn't notice the blotches before until I was looking up at you from this angle.' _he explained.

'_That makes sense but unfortunately I think this is as good as it'll get as far as the blotches go.'_

'_The faint streaks of red trailing down your shirt tell me you used the 'touchless car wash' method so I beg to differ. You can do better than that.'_

'_Yes, Moooom._'

'…_I'm not your mom. There'd be too many awkward questions if I were.' _he deadpanned. '_But whatever. If you don't want to, that's your business.'_

'_No, I will. You were right…on both counts. I half-assed it because I was still a little paranoid that I'd make myself turn if I went over the half-moons and opened up the skin further. Should have figured I'd end up making an even bigger mess in the process.' _I let out a sigh of my own. '_Not that it'll matter if my new theory about why they kept me here for so long holds any water._'

'…_And this theory is?'_

I was suddenly overwhelmed by this inexplicable urge to hit him. I didn't act on it but it didn't stop the notion from being any more alluring.

'…_You damn well know Squall Leonhart. You're just making me say it. This whole making me go in the bathroom stall thing's just a clever ruse to corner me about it, isn't it?'_

'_First, we're in the bathroom stall because you suggested it. Second, yes, I'm making you say it so I know how far off you are before I'll inevitably have to correct you.'_

The need to hit him waned. Conversely, the need to stare at him in confusion rose in equal proportion. _'Please tell me you're just having another jerkface moment.'_

He shook his head. '_I'm afraid not. In short, I had been told something earlier today by Nurse Remy that she had willfully neglected to tell you upstairs from the sounds of what you said._'

'_Do I…do I want to know?_'

He shook his head again. '_No, but it's something you deserve to know all the same._'

"_Then tell me._" I sharply whispered.

He didn't. Instead of telling me, he got off of the covered toilet he'd been sitting on and quietly motioned for me to take his spot; I didn't dare to breathe in this moment as I wordlessly complied and sat down. He then crouched down so we were seeing each other eye-to-eye and mere inches apart, making escape from his gaze nigh impossible.

Then he told me at point blank range.

"…_You're a sorceress._"


	25. Chapter XXIV – Drifting

**Author's Notes – **Sorry for the delay, my muse has been out to sea lately (probably didn't help that Animal Crossing New Leaf came out this month either). I'm heading into territory I no longer have mostly planned out so it got a little tougher than usual. Hopefully this isn't a trend that continues.

_Chapter XXIV – Drifting_

My initial thought was to be thankful he had the foresight to seat me on the toilet.

My second thought was to be as equally not-thankful because this blocked access to the toilet itself to promptly puke my brains out. But somewhere within my whirlwind of thoughts and nausea, I was able to let a few words escape the confines of my mouth safely.

"…_How…why…when?"_ I murmured like a crazed woman. His gaze faltered and I honestly couldn't blame him.

'_Today when you were out cold._'

I blinked. Between moments of said blinking, I noticed that he finally decided to look at me again.

'_After being questioned ad nauseam, I went to my room and closed the curtains around my bed to try to sleep. When I woke up, Remy was standing there by my bed.' _he began to explain. _'I told her that unless if she had an explanation for the other night, she might as well leave now. She tossed me the first part of Bear's letter and asked if we had any connected symptoms instead.'_

'…_So you spilled the beans about the telepathy and she just straight up told you I'm a sorceress?'_

'_No. I played stupid and asked how that was possible and why it mattered._' he clarified. '_She explained that transition symptoms owe to the vaccine's synthetic paramagic, not the curse itself. Human bodies aren't made to host or transfer active magic and can never adapt to it - how shitty you feel correlates to how strong the magic's presence is and how fast it tapers off. Considering those facts, what happened to the both of us made no sense – I shouldn't have been feeling better off-and-on and you shouldn't have had a magic-related blackout when they're typically limited to CET cases._'

'…_but it made sense together if our conditions were linked because…of this._'

Squall curtly nodded. _'She probably asked you to cut this out because we had been previously-suspected to be unique cases individually, not because our symptoms were intertwined – and according to her, even Bear had thought this as well. To her knowledge, no one else has put two and two together like this yet though…it might owe more to the farfetched nature of this theory in general.'_

'_Ok.'_

I pinched the bridge of my nose, closed my eyes and lowered my head a little, trying to process this all. What he said made sense in a cause-and-effect kind of way and yet…there was still at least one glaring question still left unanswered and it was giving me a headache. I wasn't sure if I should just get it off my chest and ask or hold my tongue and/or brainwaves and take his presence as my proof instead.

But then I heard the click of the stall door lock and I found myself moving my fingers away from my nose, opening my eyes, tilting my head up and starting to reconsider that first option; he must have noticed that my eyes weren't closed anymore as his hand was extended in my direction.

The moment I caught his gaze dead on, I blurted, "You're being awfully nice to someone you should probably be fearing with every fiber of your being."

To his credit, his extended hand did not drift back to his side. "If this was some secret you deliberately hid from me and not something you learned just now, maybe I would. But as it stands, I'll take my chances."

He must have taken notice of the dumbfounded look on my face because he made a point of crouching back down to my level.

"_You're no different than you were a day ago._" he quietly stated.

I blinked. _"So…no insidious undue influence or cosmic balance sheet balancing at work here?"_

He shook his head. "None." he answered without an ounce of hesitation. "I still think you're mostly irritating and strange."

…Well, if there was any conclusive proof that I wasn't brainwashing him to carry out my currently-undecided nefarious plans, I think this unabashedly-backhanded comment would have been a serious contender.

Still, the less than complimentary words didn't exactly stop me from lunging forward into yet another probably-unwanted full-tilt hug…especially since the momentum of it all and the awkward angle caused me to fall forward and him to fall back from his crouched position. This made him nearly hit his head against the stall's metal partition though that probably mattered very little since, well, I'd imagine that being sandwiched between the cold floor and my damp t-shirt wasn't very pleasant experience to say the least.

"…_You need to…stop hugging…me on a whim…like this._" he wheezed.

"…_Sorry. Had to prove you really meant it when you said you still thought I was annoying and weird."_ I weakly tried to josh. _"I'd ask about that tattoo I'd never seen before to be extra annoying on principle but I think washing up's probably higher on the to-do list right now."_

"_You're right…it is."_

I unceremoniously peeled myself off of him a few seconds later. Waiting for him to follow suit, I took a few steps back to avoid hindering things further. As expected, he got up and immediately reached for the door handle to swing it open. The only problem was that I'd heard another door swing open first.

After exchanging the briefest of looks, I sent, '_Go sit on the toilet seat with your feet up now so whoever that is can't see you._'

'_There's no point.' _he shot back as he relocked the door and stepped back. _'It's not going to be some stranger going to the bathroom at god knows what hour this is.'_

He pointed at the toilet seat as if he wanted _me_ to sit on it once more right before walking over to the right of the base so his feet would be out of sight. This particular action sorta…contradicted what he just said but maybe there was a point I was missing here so I just did what he asked. That much became super-obvious when he awkwardly turned and crouched a little so our eyes met once more.

'_Crouch on the lid as if zombie wandered in here and you didn't want to be spotted._'

Oh. Well, that made more sense. After bringing up my legs slowly so my feet could rest on the lid, I tightly gripped the back of the toilet with my fingers and rose into a crouched position that way. Soon after that, Squall straightened himself somewhat to match my newfound height.

With bated and hushed breath, I waited with Squall for the other shoe to drop. Admittedly, I wished he would have just said 'crouch on the lid' without bothering to tack on a scenario for colour though – now I was wondering if Remy really was dead and still where we left her.

A few more footsteps echoed in the distance and then the room was suddenly overwhelmed by an unnatural silence. The only good thing about this was that it told me that it sure as hell wasn't a zombie walking in here – all the other things were driving me to intensely regret the fact that I was blocking my own access to the toilet bowl once more. I felt a reassuring hand on my shoulder but could not spare a moment to even blink with my eyes trained on the door; the battle of good and bad nerves duking it out in my stomach continued on without fanfare or acknowledgement.

More steps echoed in the distance, punctuated by yet another silence.

Through the sliver of space I could see through the stall door, a flash of white passed by. Was this person a researcher in a lab coat? A lost patient? Something completely different?

_"Please tell me you two weren't trying to get lucky in a bathroom stall."_

I finally made time to blink – definitely hadn't been expecting that flash of white to belong to a ghost.

Against my better judgement, I leapt off my seat and hastily unlocked and opened the door. The face staring back at me was indeed who I thought it was despite the harsh peroxide-blonde dye job and half-frame glasses she was currently sporting – I'd recognize those warm brown eyes anywhere…even despite the tiredness which dulled them significantly and the aforementioned glasses she was trying to hide them behind.

"Told you I'd find a way to keep in touch. Well, it's minus the whole chicobo element…unless you count the one that clearly served as my inspiration for this new 'do." she tried to joke. The slight chuckle to her tone sobered immediately upon taking a peek into the stall, however. "Ok, if I may be serious for a moment. I'll answer any questions you two will probably have later but for now, we need to get out of here before anyone else finds us. I've bought us a little time by shorting some of the ancient cameras on this floor."

She looked down and quickly dug through the large white canvas tote at her side, proceeding to throw thick charcoal-grey polar fleece sweaters at both me and Squall. After fishing through the bag a second time, she pulled out two pairs of winter boots in different sizes and set them in front of us.

"I'm sorry if the boots or sweaters don't fit well – they're mine and my husband's. And before you ask, yes, there are badgers on the sweaters and yes, we like matching like dorks." she admitted after pre-emptively apologizing.

Just as I put the sweater over my head and picked up the smaller pair of boots for myself, I heard Squall's voice echo right behind me. "…So I assume that there is no hope for us if we stay here?"

I looked back at him for a second before shifting my gaze back onto Allison. Without much hesitation, she nodded.

"Remy's last text before she must have been infected changed everything." she solemnly answered. "I admit that this is a risk on multiple levels but as it stands, if you stay here, you'll become a plaything for Odine - it's not a question of 'if' anymore. I'll elaborate on this more later but if you don't feel comfortable, by all means, feel free to stay."

'_Do you trust her?' _I felt Squall's sent thought nigh-instantaneously after Allison stopped talking. My gaze shifted again.

'_Yes. Yes, I do._'

'_Good enough for me._'

The next thing I knew, he had his own badger sweater slipped over his head and was walking forward to collect his boots. It wasn't long after we both slipped on our respective pairs when the three of us walked out of the bathroom altogether with Allison leading the way. We took a right and things…something didn't feel right. We weren't using any amount of secrecy, stealth or…pretty much anything associated with trying to escape undetected. Maybe it was because of the cameras Nurse Bear had mentioned she'd shorted but it just felt wrong all the same. We passed by Nurse Remy only to find her still lying there but no longer covered by Squall's gown; I knew I wouldn't be able to ask about why this was until later but I couldn't seem to look away and try to work out a plausible hypothetical scenario in any event. Naturally, it was only when I'd nearly walked into Squall's back and tripped that I decided to start looking forward and watching where I was going. Now that I was doing just that, I could see that not even one person seemed to be at the front counter which was a rarity in itself – even considering the hour, this generally never happened. Sure, you might find a said counter person half (or fully) asleep – I knew this much from my occasional impromptu strolls down here when I really couldn't sleep in the past – but there was always a body or two there, no questions asked. I guess this was going to be another question I'd have to save for Allison once it was ok to waste time with questions because this was just way too convenient.

Passing by the front desk and exiting out the door, my eyes were immediately drawn to the general direction of where the rumble of a car's engine coming to life in the drop-off zone was coming from. The car's headlights didn't come on immediately but considering the night sky was clear tonight – no rain, snow or even clouds to be heard of – I was able to see the driver's silhouette clearly. While I didn't know what Nurse Bear drove car-wise or what her husband even looked like with certainty, I assumed that's who was behind the wheel as we all rushed to the car, taking in consideration that the person appeared to have very short hair.

But when I was close enough to reach for a door handle, I realized that I couldn't have been further from the truth – a _familiar_ face was staring back at me and it wasn't Zell's.

…It was my father's.

It wasn't my intention — namely because I knew that we had to get out of here fast — but, I froze upon catching his gaze. Guess it's the kind of knee-jerk reaction that happens when you don't see someone for three years because _they_ don't see eye to eye on things and suddenly they're there to spring you out of a messy situation like it hadn't happened at all.

Allison must have noticed my frozenness because she snuck a hand in there and opened the door herself, causing me to jump ten feet up and backwards. Thankfully for everyone else, my reaction didn't include some Grade A pathetic yelping.

"Like I said before, we'll explain later." she said as she ushered me inside the car.

What only felt like a nanosecond later, I found myself in the far end of the backseat right behind my father, Squall on the other side with the door slammed shut behind us and Allison plopping herself into the passenger seat before shutting it closed too. That being said, my father waited an extra moment or two for all of us to be buckled up properly before he even considered shifting out of park.

I suppose it was nice to know that some things hadn't changed despite how incredibly messed up this situation was.

'…_Rinoa?_'

I looked to my right, a sense of dread suddenly forming a cloud over my head as the car started moving. '…_Yeah?_'

'_I'm assuming that's your father?_'

Ugh. Damn perceptive boy. Why did I have to be linked with someone who wasn't a dummy?

'_Yeah…it is._' I conceded, figuring that there was no point in stalling the inevitable. Even still, I couldn't help but ask about the method to his madness. '_Just curious. How did you figure that one out? Was it because I paused at the door?_'

He shook his head. '_Not quite. I only figured it out when saw his eyes in the rear-view mirror. Put two and two together after that._'

'_Ah. I see. Well, we'd better cut this out now because he's going to start watching you like a hawk if he doesn't know what the deal is with the staring._' I sent. '_On second thought…scratch that. I don't think knowing that the whole staring thing is because of this weird bond's going to help – maybe if he thought you were gay or a sentient robot from outer space or a sentient gay robot, maybe but…uh, hey, at least he doesn't have access to firearms…that I know of._'

Understandably, Squall gave me a look. '_Sentient gay robot? I wasn't aware that robots had sexual orientations._'

Ok_…_so maybe it wasn't for what I thought it was. '_Well, I guess they could have it programmed in. You know, with advanced AI or something. I guess my father's imagination's vastly improved by ten million percent since I've been gone._'

'_…Right. I'm going to look the other way now so I don't incite this 'vastly-improved' imagination of his further just in case he doesn't think of me as a sentient gay robot.__' _he sent before he finally broke eye contact.

With little in the way of options at my disposal, my eyes drifted to the window so I could kill time by watching the nighttime scenery pass me by – or rather lack thereof; the hospital was on the outskirts of town, a definite far cry from the gorgeous, well-lit and colourful views of downtown Deling or even the beautiful sights of the pristine suburbs I'd known. With nothing to occupy my brain, my thoughts began to drift once more. I chiefly wondered where we'd be going if it wasn't my old mansion house, and what my father had to do with Nurse Bear's plan, whatever that was.

"…_Rinoa._"

My head perked up at my father's voice. It wasn't like him to call me anything other than my actual given name, even in spite of the fact that I'd spent so much time and effort trying to get him to call me Rinoa as a teenager when I decided that Elizabeth just felt wrong years after Mom had passed. While younger me would have been pleased at my once-fruitless endeavors bearing actual fruit, older me knew that this victory…couldn't have been good.

"Um…yeah?"

"I would prefer that you keep all communication with your seatmate _audible_."

I blinked as my mind tried to wrap around that comment.

"So…Remy told Allison about the telepathy and she told you in turn?"

"No."

My face turned beet-red. "Oh god…please don't tell me you have telepathy too and you heard the whole gay robot thing."

"…Gay robot?" Allison interjected with a surprised chuckle, "I think I need to hear more about this. Well…after your father explains the situation."

Without skipping a beat, my father did just that.

"With all due respect, Mrs. Bear...I'd rather save that full answer until we get to the mansion to sufficiently explain everything."

Or not.

"I don't understand why you can't just explain now. It'll be at least 20 minutes before we're home – I'm sure that's plenty of time." I indignantly countered to no response.

I guess things really hadn't changed in three years. That man was still truly as infuriating as ever.


End file.
